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Book Review of On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon

On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon
Bonnie avatar reviewed on + 422 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 6


Isn't that just a great title? And for me, what a very beautiful story.
It didn't start all that fast, an old woman reminiscing, going back to her pre-war girlhood in Virginia. Just talking. She was beginning to lose me. And then suddenly I was loathe to put the book down, kept going back to it. Why? I can't say, for just like A Virtuous Woman, there seemed to be no plot. No action. No showing, just telling. But I am finding that with so much literary fiction nowadays. At least that which I am reading.
At one point, the book started bringing to mind The Oldest Living Confederate Widow. And that was before we reached the war. And that sense grew stronger as I read to the end of the book. Strange, since OLCW was full of action and this wasn't, and OLCW was huge and this wasn't.
Being dramatic here, I know, but reading the last page of On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon just took my breath away.