I loved this novel. Published in 1950, the narrator Sophia is a young artist in London and falls in with a fellow artist; they marry and in doing so, he loses his allowance. She writes in first-person about marriage, poverty, and giving birth. There is a note at the beginning of the novel that most is fiction, but chapters 10-12 are true. Well, those chapters are about giving birth in a pre-war London hospital and they are terrifying. I wanted to hug and hold Sophia so many times while reading. She does her best; I understand where she's coming from (others may not understand some of her decisions or actions...). I read this a lot in the middle of the night while nursing my baby, and I won't lie--there were times I cried and felt a connection to this (somewhat fictional) narrator in the wee hours.

Throughout the novel, the writing felt familiar, but I couldn't pinpoint that feeling. Towards the end I realized it reads almost like modern-day confessional, as if someone was posting these chapters as entries on a livejournal maybe. It's self-reflective, naive-sounding, but the writing is superb and its brilliance subtle: I have a new book to add to my favorites.

Also, Charles was the f*ck*ng worst.