An Unknown Woman

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Summary: Review of An Unknown Woman
Review: A mysteriously touching and moving story. No one is going to ever get to borrow my copy, meaning I never want to risk losing it. Very brave of someone to choose solitary life she did but still find way to support herself and her wonderful pets. Does anyone know if she's alive and what happened to her? She must be in her 70's now I think.

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Summary: an unknown woman by alice koller
Review: an unknown woman by alice koller defines how it is to be a woman. many will be able to relate what she has been through. i myself have realize many things, some very complex and hard to understand. its very sad if you will only see the bad things that happens to your life instead of seeing the brighter side. but alice has a problem here and writing the journal is one good way of letting oneself release those badfeelings and in the process realizing the mistakes of what she was doing to her life so,just to get back on track shes just got to know where she went wrong. i really do think there is an honesty in this book that some readers might understand.

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Summary: An Unknown Woman
Review: I've just finished rereading this courageous and deeply personal journey, and it's still lingering with me as I type this review. I wasn't in the same mindset the first time I picked up the book many years ago, therefore I felt a bit on the peripheral in identifying with Alice. I have since embarked on my own soulful expedition that's lasted several years thus far, and I've come to realize that to truly find my inner core, it must be done alone and it must often be a raw, painful process. I don't let "them" tell me it isn't. It's not for the weak willed, and certainly not for the person who NEEDS people to survive. I have reached many of the revelations that Alice achieved, and they were hard won battles indeed, but am convinced worth it in the end. Alice's message, and my own experience, is to give in to the the power to BE! For me, it's rejoicing in the most basic aspects of being alive when the veil of despair darkens my vision - the ability to take deep cleansing breaths, the range of graceful motion my physicality allows me, exploring my inner universe, quietly surveying my surroundings, loving my animal companion, trusting the ability to take care of myself, and knowing that nothing in this life is etched in stone, except my demise. I've taught myself to pay closer attention to the way I interact with others and, surprisingly to me, there's a compassion I didn't realize was there, and wouldn't have had I not undertaken this private excavation. Alice, I hope you're still among us. Thank you!

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Summary: Alice Koller's Life...
Review: Steady as she goes. As a male reading this book, I was struck by the fact that so many consider this a "women's book." No way. This is a great book for ** anyone ** wanting a glimpse inside a solitary life. Ms. Koller's vivid telling of living alone with her dog (Logos) is truly remarkable. If you ever begin to feel lonely and isolated from life, as if you are "outside the circle," pick up this book and read how being alone doesn't have to mean lonely. No, this book is not a book for women, this is a book for anyone with a beating heart and a curiosity of a wonderful life lived alone. Alice Koller is one stable and balanced individual - great book!

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Summary: Alice Koller's Life...
Review: Steady as she goes. As a male reading this book, I was struck by the fact that so many consider this a "women's book." No way. This is a great book for ** anyone ** wanting a glimpse inside a solitary life. Ms. Koller's vivid telling of living alone with her dog (Logos) is truly remarkable. If you ever begin to feel lonely and isolated from life, as if you are "outside the circle," pick up this book and read how being alone doesn't have to mean lonely. No, this book is not a book for women, this is a book for anyone with a beating heart and a curiosity of a wonderful life lived alone. Alice Koller is one stable and balanced individual - great book!

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Summary: An image of confused solitude
Review: This is an autobiographical novel, about Alice Koller's experience in the early sixties (the book is copyrighted 1981). At that time, she dropped everything she was doing and spent three months alone on Nantucket, in the wintertime, trying to sort her life out. It's an interesting topic - a woman's search for her self, though not written as elegantly as it could have been.

Although it does kind of drag, and it's at times hard to follow Ms. Koller's train of thought, the book does have several moments of great lucidity and insight. Some scenes, particularly those of Alice and her dog on the beach in wintertime, linger in memory for a long time.

The following passage I found to be particularly powerful - although the language is somewhat obtuse, as though she is having a hard time articulating her thoughts, the message still comes through:

"Even when I choose some future good toward which these present minutes point, I won't let there be hours that I only tolerate. I won't ever again put up with unthinking habit or being bored, or ugliness in things or persons. I have nothing important to do, but I have no time to waste marking time. Each thing I touch or see or smell or taste or hear during my day must give me the sense of something good in the doing.

Nor are there things to wait for, except things that I myself set in motion now. Waiting? Why, the stupendous thing I used to wait for was something that was going to be done to me, or for me: to be initiated by someone else, independently of my choice. But there isn't a someone else to make things hapen to me: I'm the only person who can do what I decide needs to be done. And besides, there is no reason for anyone else to do anything at all for me, particularly something as glorious as that thing I expected.

So on two counts waiting is irrelevant. Nothing to wait for, because I'll initiate what happens to me. Nothing to wait for, because these minutes now passing are my life. They are the minutes in which my living is to be done. Whatever I do, I'll do in my own time, and I will do it."

Rating:
Summary: An image of confused solitude
Review: This is an autobiographical novel, about Alice Koller's experience in the early sixties (the book is copyrighted 1981). At that time, she dropped everything she was doing and spent three months alone on Nantucket, in the wintertime, trying to sort her life out. It's an interesting topic - a woman's search for her self, though not written as elegantly as it could have been.

Although it does kind of drag, and it's at times hard to follow Ms. Koller's train of thought, the book does have several moments of great lucidity and insight. Some scenes, particularly those of Alice and her dog on the beach in wintertime, linger in memory for a long time.

The following passage I found to be particularly powerful - although the language is somewhat obtuse, as though she is having a hard time articulating her thoughts, the message still comes through:

"Even when I choose some future good toward which these present minutes point, I won't let there be hours that I only tolerate. I won't ever again put up with unthinking habit or being bored, or ugliness in things or persons. I have nothing important to do, but I have no time to waste marking time. Each thing I touch or see or smell or taste or hear during my day must give me the sense of something good in the doing.

Nor are there things to wait for, except things that I myself set in motion now. Waiting? Why, the stupendous thing I used to wait for was something that was going to be done to me, or for me: to be initiated by someone else, independently of my choice. But there isn't a someone else to make things hapen to me: I'm the only person who can do what I decide needs to be done. And besides, there is no reason for anyone else to do anything at all for me, particularly something as glorious as that thing I expected.

So on two counts waiting is irrelevant. Nothing to wait for, because I'll initiate what happens to me. Nothing to wait for, because these minutes now passing are my life. They are the minutes in which my living is to be done. Whatever I do, I'll do in my own time, and I will do it."

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Summary: Lonliness is a sad sad thing, remember!
Review: Though her novel does offer an interesting take on the Thoreau's classic, it is shear hubris to believe she attains nearly the level of the subtlety or philosophical complexity of his work. She in vain attempts to impose a sort of solipsistic notion which runs rampant through her own weak idealogy. The protagonist is a lonely lonely individual, perhaps it is a reflection of the author's apparent lonliness, hence the story goes from being moving to pathetic. Thoreau was attaining trascendental escape through solitude, our author ohh...excuse me protagonist has no other option except to be lonely, she has fallen into this state through her own lack of social adeptness. This lack of adeptness however is extremely well written, which can only lead me to conclude that our author also lacks social adeptness. It seems that if the protagonist was placed in social environment, her self-delusions of her intelligence would be so blatant and transparent that every word she would utter would drip with condescending venom. Clearly, the protagonist is an unkown woman, it seems however the author is happy about such a state and I would imagine in her own life she desires anonymity, unfortunately in our highly "connected" world such an attidude leads to confrontation, and her feeble attempt to escape is only met with derision from this reader.

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Summary: a wonderful book
Review: to the critic Inna I think another significant fact is before this book there were very few ordinary women who wrote about the individual woman's journey to find her true self. The writing may not be elegant but it's more important that she had the courage to tell her story. Why does it haunt so many readers like me? There is something magic in the way she tells her story so who cares about literary elegance here! If she helps others on their journeys or to begin their journeys she has left behind a great gift. Again, thank you Alice wherever you are.

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Summary: Entertaining yet serious self-searching
Review: Well worth reading; entertaining and enlightening, up to a point. Some minor complaints: too much walking around to no purpose, too much boring talk about the dog, too much melodrama and tears, etc. But these are mostly minor distractions from a serious and important book. Much like Tolstoy's Confession. One "reason for living" she doesn't consider: religion. Starts slow. Worth reading twice.