Hey Lovelies,
July has been a real MIA month for me and I'm sorry, if it helps any I have some reviews coming. That and I'm itching to get my writing done, which is a good thing. So sorry if my blog post today is a little self orientated. The beginning of the month I took a road trip and met up with an old friend of mine, and hung out with a couple of friends. One friend and I drove down from Jersey to Virginia to meet up with a close friend of mine (strangely one of my closest friends is my ex, I know not the norm). We then drove to NC and hung out with friends with in SC, it was great to hang out with people after being a hermit in school, especially ones that I haven't seen in years. My 2006 Nissan Altima was a champ and handled the driving amazingly :)
Italy, I went on a cruise with my family that started out of Barcelona and ended up in Venice. My sister took the pictures on the trip so god only knows when I will get the pictures. Everyday was like 90ish degrees, no clouds so seeing Pompeii, Pisa, Rome and stuff was great! I have an issues with tomatoes (I have eating habits of a 5 year old) and the food was great. In Florence, it is sad to say one of the freshs things in my head was the fields upon fields of sunflowers, I like them :) Probably one of my favorite places was the Colosseum, I was told it was small and eh. Yet when I got there, it was just amazing to touch and see the ancient piece of history that use survived all these years, stories of gladiators and animals showing up to fight. I'll stop myself before I go all history dorky...
So writing...I'm itching to get things done. I'm still working on Family Ties 2 (invisible bonds) which is going well. Beneath the Scars is mostly what I wanted to talk about though. I know I said a year and a half ago that I finished writing it and my friend was editing it. She finished in December and I don't know what is going on. So I'm going through it again, and I'm going to ask for someone else to go through it before I send it to the editors to get the ball rolling :) I'll keep everyone in the loop, but I'm hoping things will be happening soon! I'm getting edgy...
~Ottilie
Wednesday 31 July 2013
Tuesday 16 July 2013
New Release ~ Faith Sullivan
Hey Lovelies!
Faith Sullivan the author of Heartbeat that I posted right before my road trip has a new adult book that was released today! I can't wait to check it out myself :) Also a giveaway at the bottom of the post ;)
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Title: Take Me Now (Take Me Now, #1)
Author: Faith Sullivan
Expected release date: July 16, 2013
Genre:Contemporary Romance
Age Group: New Adult
Ebook available at:
Kindle ($2.99)
Nook ($2.99)
Goodreads link:
Book Description:
How do you survive the internship from hell?
Don't fall in love.
Ivy thought being a reporter-in-training at the Independent Gazette would be her dream summer job. Little did she know, interviewing Eric, a landscaper with a heart of gold, would derail her plans. It turns out Ivy's boss, Lauren, has been eying his chiseled physique for quite some time.
But at twenty-four, Eric already has a tragic past, one that he is still reeling from. Even though his ordeal turned him into some sort of local celebrity, it's been a while since he's shared his bed with anyone. When he comes to Ivy's rescue out of the blue, it's not long before the two of them start seeing each other behind Lauren's back. When they get caught, Ivy's journey toward a college degree is jeopardized and her relationship with Eric is severely put to the test.
Career versus love? In the end, a shocking turn of events provides Ivy with a revelation she never saw coming.
Excerpt:
If only I were open to the possibility of romance, but I’m not. There’s no way I can be. There are circumstances that can’t be wished away or ignored. My heart’s not ready—not yet. And while this absolutely gorgeous girl has wandered into my life, I’m not going to act on it. It’s too soon.
I stride into my shop, gently placing her on the counter. Her feet are bleeding and she looks like she could use a drink of water. She’s covered in dust from the road but she looks adorable sitting there. I don’t know what it’s like to be in a scenario like this with a girl. I’m used to things being straightforward and laid out before me. This looks like something I could get easily lost in if I’m not careful.
We still haven’t said a word to each other, and I hate to break the silence but it can’t be avoided. “Rest here a minute. I’ll be right back.”
Her hand lingers on my upper arm, her thumb massaging by bicep. I exhale heavily, trying desperately to clear my head. Her touch is stirring things inside me I haven’t experienced in quite some time. Emotions I never thought I’d feel again. “Thank you,” she whispers, her eyes never leaving mine.
“No problem,” I try to say as casually as possible. She’s looking at me like I’m her knight in shining armor and I don’t want her to get the wrong idea. I can’t go down that road again. I just can’t. My soul still isn’t fully healed from the last time. I can’t trust myself in these kinds of situations. I need to back away as gracefully as I can.
Other New Adult contemporary romances by Faith Sullivan!
Heartbeat (Heartbeat #1)
Come What May (Heartbeat #2)
Unexpected
Author Links:
Blog
Amazon
Twitter
Goodreads
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La Devineresse, 1679
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| La Jobin and the Marquis, with body parts falling down the chimney |
La Divineresse, ou les faux Enchantements was a play first performed in 1679, created by the younger Corneille (Thomas) and Jean Donneau de Visé.
My purpose here is to try to read this text against texts which are far more familiar to me, the Jacobean and Caroline witch plays. One first finding instantly suggests itself - just as Heywood and Brome converted the cruelly credited accusations and the slow-moving central process to resolve the 1633-4 Lancashire case into a ‘merry and excellent’ comedy, so Corneille and his co-adjutor opted to write a comedy, one that is as free as possible from polemic, or from promoting any metaphysical alarm.
King Charles might have found a model for state intervention in local witchcraft trials and verdicts (as happened in 1634) either in some of the later actions of his father, or from learning of processes abroad, specifically in France. Across the channel, if provincial courts passed guilty verdicts in witchcraft trials, the Parlement de Paris would overturn these verdicts. Witchcraft remained an uncontested verity: but the central authorities would quench or nullify all local action about particular instances of it.
Then, in ‘the affair of the poisons’, sorcery was discovered to be happening in Paris, and at Versailles. Ian Bostridge suggests that the surviving documents perhaps give us access into a world of ‘elite’ witchcraft. Privileged clients, male and female, were apparently willing to credit a wide range of paranormal powers and pay to have them harnessed to their desires. La Bosse, La Voisin, La Vigoreaux and other practitioners seem to have been dispensing love philtres, fortune-telling (by palmistry, mainly), and selling all kinds of charms and amulets. These ‘sorceresses’ also seem to have been the agents for more dangerous services. The double moral weight of Louis’ authoritarianism and that the church seem to have promoted recourse in some people to acts of desecration, in having black masses performed. For women in trouble with unwanted pregnancies, La Voisin facilitated abortions, then illegal. Switching to the other obvious category of person a woman might desperately want to be rid of, these urban wise women offered methods of causing husbands who refused to die to depart with a more convenient speed - either by magic purportedly promoting this desired effect, or by poison. La Bosse was conclusively proved by an entrapment to deal in poison. Numbers of female clients were susceptible to this fantasy of murder with responsibility as it were magically transferred to its facilitators.
As with Simon Forman and the Countess of Essex in London forty years before, credulity and cruel desperation reached to the top of the social ladder. Louis XIV’s chief investigator, La Reynie, was soon eliciting (by ‘enhanced interrogation’, as the Pentagon might say) from the arrested ‘sorceresses’ and their associates, the names of people from the highest social circles, including the Sun King’s own former maitresse en titre, Madame de Montespan. The story concocted was predictable (being the kind of thing that was said about the Earl of Somerset and James I): that she had won his love in the first place by magic, had subsequently tried to regain it by more magic, and that she had a hand in the death of a rival, the Duchess of Fontanges, when that occured right in the middle of the poisons affair.
As soon as aristocrats were named, Louis had set about a cover up - all testimonies naming courtiers, and records of the questioning of those courtiers who did not flee the scene rather than testify, were to be kept by his investigator La Reynie on separate sheets of paper. A coherent and continuous account of the evidence against the expendables, without obvious redactions, could then be produced. Famously, when the king finally called off the whole investigation, he personally burned all the evidence against the favoured denizens of his Versailles - that La Reynie had made copies was unknown to him, and from their rediscovery comes the knowledge scholars have of these murky events and allegations.
And so, in a Paris gripped, mortified, appalled by these findings (for elite Parisian gossip served as effectively as Twitter might do now, and names leaked out from the ‘Chambre Ardente’ hearings despite everything), and when ten expendable persons had already been put to death, the play, La Divineresse was performed. Like The Late Lancashire Witches, it was well-timed, and a great success. Its lengthy series of 175 performances was rather more like what we’d understand nowadays as a good theatre run than the wonder of three consecutive afternoons which was the exceptional achievement of the Heywood-Brome play.
Poisons? Abortions? Black masses and acts of desecration? Non, non, et non!Against a background of wild stories - many of which probably originated with wretched people under torture trying to prolong their own lives by naming aristocrats as their former clients - and operations of the melodramatic court, that newly-revived ‘Chambre Ardente’ - black-draped, flambeau-lit, inquisatorial and (notionally) secret, Donneau and Corneille opted for a drawing room / quack’s consultation room comedy. There is no black magic here: there is only macabre fraud and gullibility. They recommend their piece as highly didactic, salutory, a helpful exposure of the realities of professed practitioners of magic.
Their play is described critically as a pièce à tiroirs, a chest of drawers, as La Jobin’s clients (like those of Jonson’s Alchemist) arrive one by one. Each embedded scene contains its own little set of contents. The diablèrie is in the heads of the clients. La Jobin is lucid, acute, and, when not entire in control, a brilliant improviser. She is assisted by subordinates, who, to impress new clients, say and hint far more about their mistress’s dark powers than she herself does. La Jobin plays up to their expectations while parting them from their money.
Besides the very expressive pièce à tiroirsdesignation, La Divineresse is also described as thèâtre de machine, a play reliant on spectacle or stage machinery. La Jobin, nothing else but a charlatan and a cheat, has at her command the illusionistic and personnel resources of a theatre. At moments in Jonson’s Alchemist, belief in the project seems to rub off from the clients onto Subtle, who will start talking about the ‘Great Art’ as if he believed in it in some part of his mind separate from knowledge of his own utter fraudulence. Madame Jobin has no such deviations from clear-sightedness. She is a bland promise-making machine - as soon as she knows what the client wants (and one truly believing customer can barely be brought to utter what it is, so confident is she in the supernatural insight a sorceress has to have), La Jobin is ready with assurances. A commercial fairy-godmother, she will condescend to grant the wishes of each client: an ointment that will peel away ugliness from a woman, and then a syrup that will which enable her to sing like an opera singer. A magical hand-grip upon a rapier, the little finger held just soto make the charm operative, that will give the war-loving coward M. Gilet invulnerability. (His enthusiam to show his courage has finally to be reined in with a caution that he must be mindful that she has performed the same service for other men, who also bear charmed lives). One woman client wants larger breasts (and breast augmentation certainly seems to have been part of La Voisin’s stock-in-trade). A male client called La Giraudiere seeks the ability to have sex with any woman he desires. After he has filled the purse of a masquerade devil, La Jobin’s establishment extends to a procession of the women he will have. She barely leaves the stage to make what would be in realistic terms very hasty arrangements for this parade. La Giraudiere is artfully led to understand that he will get to have these women only after six months or maybe more, the spirits involved in such a powerful spell being very difficult to win over.
The main plot strand of the play involves three characters. Madame Noblet comes closest to the realities of the poisons scandal: she wants her old husband out of the way, and for La Jobin to prevent the possible marriage to a countess of the marquis she has decided on as his successor. The countess (of Astragon), in her turn, will only marry the marquis if he can prove to her that La Jobin is a fraud. Despite La Jobin deploying her most elaborate effects to convince him, he perseveres, and eventually succeeds.
Madame Jobin’s business repeatedly involves convincing a woman who is reluctant to marry, or to re-marry, that a suitor really loves her, and only her. The fortune-teller as go-between and match-maker is familiar enough from the kind of accusations made about William Lilly’s manipulation of clients by prediction. In Act 2, a Marquise is convinced of La Jobin’s abilities by witnessing bodily swelling pass from one of her accomplices to another (Julia Prest seems to think this is an oblique allusion to the abortions La Voisin arranged. If this demonstration hints at a pregnancy, it ludicrously transfers to a man). Once she has been convinced, the Marquise is told that she will see her husband-to-be in a magical mirror (this stage property is initially curtained off). Beyond a sheet of what may in performance have been smoked glass, the sorceress has positioned her male client. A love-letter is sent, with an instant delivery and reply accomplished, rather as in ‘Harry Potter’, by means of ‘une maniere de Chat-huan qu’elle a la-dedans’. The Marquise sees the paranormally-delivered letter she has just written arrive; and then she sees a reply being written, and sent by owl-post, so that it falls to her from above.
Later, and more strikingly, a Monsieur Troufignac from Perigord arrives late in the action. His wife has left him, and he wants magic to bring her back. ‘Donnez-moi sept pièces d’or pour les offrir a l’Esprit qui m’amènera votre femme’. No nonsense about offering the spirit your soul, or blood from your body. Only money counts. He cavils at the price: how about four gold pieces? Haven’t you ever heard, she asks him, that seven is a mystical number? This he reluctantly concedes.
La Jobin is reflecting in soliloquy on how how many fools there are, who make her wise in spite of herself, when he re-enters, with news that he has just seen his wife arrive outside, dressed as a man (and he allows that he’s very impressed by the speed with which Jobin’s spirit has coerced her to the house). He leaves the scene, and the information he has just given allows La Jobin to stupefy Madame Troufignac with her occult powers of identification. But the wife herself has arrived with a quite remarkable request to the sorceress: to be transgendered into a man, to escape the disagreeable life of a married woman (‘La condition des femmes est trop malheureuses’). La Jobin tries to normalise this extraordinary woman, telling her to go back to Perigord with her husband. But Madame Troufignac says they can talk about that another day when the money she has purloined from the marital home has run out: for now, she will spend as long as she can in the role of libertine, chasing the women she has noticed seem to be responsive to her new appearance. The practitioner of magic is simply unable to make any money out of this lesbian. As La Jobin works on commission to convince those who doubt the wisdom of marrying, and would profit from Monsieur Troufignac if she did persuade his wife to return, she seems in general to promote and guard marriages. But here, she meets a person beyond her manipulation, a misogamist beyond her ill-founded assurances (Madame Troufignac would not be interested in having the husband she has left treated with a love philtre, as is offered - that’s of no use to her at all.)
The discourse of misogamy, professions of reluctance to marry, or of a woman’s desire to remain a widow, is prominent in the play. It is as if a mutual scepticism can only be banished by practices that, in a proper view of the reality of things, demand their own scepticism. But then again, contrary to the suggestion I have just made (that the scepticism of the misogamist requires magic to deceive it), it might be inferred from this play that the feeble nature of the fraudulent contrivances that impart belief expresses how little we require to instil belief that a would-be partner is the ideal. (Off-hand, I can only think of Massinger’s The Picture as mixing misogamy and magic.)
Up to date as it seems to be about the daunting price of marriage (especially for women), the play also sounds modern about money. La Jobin makes her promises in return for a fee. In place of the diabolic contract, it’s a situation where any unscrupulous but moneyed client secures illicit aid. The clients arrive at the consulting rooms pre-corrupted by the money that promises to secure their wishes for them. Handing it over is a transfer of sin to an experienced sinner - or we can see it as a version of confession (‘I wish to do these amoral things in the future’, they confide), with a absolving penance beforehand (‘then part with your money’). La Jobin has a brother, introduced to us as anxious about the damage to his reputation in the tax office done by having a sister who is a reputed sorceress is doing. In some gently subversive humour, his sister convinces him that switching to assisting her in her trade would only be a small change, and he’d make more money than he does as a ‘pauvre Procureur Fiscal’. He does indeed join in with her fleecing of her clients. It is this brother that the Marquis forces to confess at pistol point to end the action. At the denouement, what seems to be a devil is revealed to be Gosselin, the taxman. While Gosselin sustains his role, his sister’s theatrical tricks back him up, with lights emerging from a hellish trapdoor. ‘Vostre Enfer ridicule ny tous vos eclairs ne m’etonnent pas’, affirms the Marquis. The only credible tormenter left is the taxman. La Jobin seems to hint that she would make the silence of those who have seen her exposure worthwhile, but the Countess says that ‘Il faut que la chose eclate, afin que personne n’y soit plus trompe’.
But I am omitting the spectacular elements. Stolen property is located (La Jobin arranged the disappearance anyway) when a vision of the missing pistolets is given by means of a gauzy curtain on which they are painted, which flaps down from a ‘zigzag’. More impressive is the elaborate means she uses to convince the sceptical Marquis: parts of a dismembered body fall down the chimney, assemble into a kind of golem, which then walks to the middle of the theatre, and disappears through the floor. That’s the scene illustrated at the top of this post. One assumes that the back of the chimney was black cloth with long vertical slits. Puppeteers behind might control the fall of fake legs and arms, and then start to assemble them, until a performer can rise up in place of the composite puppet. In the subsequent scene, La Jobin’s brother says he helped move the pretend body-parts. The highlight of Act V was a big scene with a talking head and a terrified female client who is persuaded to touch it.
The scholars writing about this play point out some resemblances between the duped clients in this play and those who consulted La Voisin and her like. Like M. Gilet, the Marquis de Feuquieres wanted invulnerability from La Vigoreaux; the Duchess of Foix wanted larger breasts; and various clients asked, like the Marquis in this play, to talk to the devil.
As with The Late Lancashire Witches, there has been some scholarly surmise that there was an element of official collusion in the appearance of this play, even a suggestion that La Reynie personally encouraged the authors. The play is certainly in line with the 1682 royal legislation against sorcery, which was aimed at people who pretend to undertake magic, at poisoners, and at those who commit acts of desecration. Yet it seems odd that a play so resolutely insistent on simple fraudulence should be written and produced when La Voisin was shortly to be burned at the stake. The play makes La Jobin guilty of exploiting other people’s stupidity, and allows her to leave the scene at the end, vaguely promising restitution, and pursued by those who suddenly doubt that she can deliver their foolish dreams. No judge, no magistrate, no cleric is referred to, the only tribunal is public opinion after exposure, the only investigator the Marquis, whose motivation comes from the challenge set by the Countess, not personal zeal.
The play is studiously not ‘about’ La Voisin. La Jobin was played by a man. The play isn’t about sorcery, but about not being made ‘jobard’ (gullible) by someone like La Jobin. When witchcraft comes to town, it is a matter of trickery. There’s something like a perception that illicit or unassuaged needs and desires in more or less anyone can be exploited by the crafty. As La Jobin herself reflects, it is fools that teach her to be wise, in spite of herself. In prison cells, accused people made up confessions under duress. La Voisin fought desperately to remain in the coffin in which she had been brought to the stake. In his palace, the Sun King burned testimonies against aristocrats. In theatres, audiences laughed night after night at this comedy of their own folly.
Thursday 11 July 2013
Review ~ Heartbeat by Faith Sullivan
Hey Lovelies!
I'm back home from my road trip. Might talk about it on another time, right now though I'm home so I am posting a review! Nice treat right? Faith Sullivan wrote a New Adult book that I'll be reading the sequel soon :) that and I figured out my Christmas Lites III story!
I'm back home from my road trip. Might talk about it on another time, right now though I'm home so I am posting a review! Nice treat right? Faith Sullivan wrote a New Adult book that I'll be reading the sequel soon :) that and I figured out my Christmas Lites III story!
Who is the rock in your life when it seems like everything around you is spinning? Katie is a woman who has always been sick her whole life, but when she goes to the movies with her Grandmother that car accident seemed to have a bigger impact on her life than anyone would have guessed. Adam is just a student trying to become a paramedic who shows up at a car accident to help a certain Grandmother to the hospital. Katie lives with her emotionally abusive father and Adam is running from a past he rather forget. These two are in each other's lives to help the other survive.
Faith Sullivan wrote an easy to read story of two people who just happened to meet because of fate. The story is well written, but also uses dialogue's from text messages and online chats to help develop these realistic characters. The readers will be-able to relate to Katie and Adam's need to find that comfort that they desperately need. Faith also has good vocabulary, but the language still flowed, which was nice to read. Heartbeat will have readers on the edge of their seats so that they need to keep reading with an ending that will have readers needing to quickly get to the second book.
Sunday 7 July 2013
Hurray! Murray!!
What a way to end the world's most famous tennis tournament! Yesterday, there was a new Women's champion, and today, there's a new Men's champion, at the 2013 Wimbledon tournament.
Finally, Andy Murray got it; remarkably in a three-setter that looked like a five-setter.
For a long time, I wanted to Andy Murray to win. He was an underdog, but not of late. He won in the Olympics and US Open; and as the 2nd seed today, he had to get the Cup, for everything was going in his way.
Luckily the match wasn't a one-sided one. The No 1 seed Novak Djokovic was giving a stiff resistance. It was a battle of equals -- long and gruelling volleys that averaged 20+ strokes, deuce after deuce after deuce; service breaks after service breaks; three missed Championship points and finally, Murray got the better of his opponent.
The first indicator was the way Murray broke and got the first set. Then in the 2nd set Murray was 1-4 down, and came back to turn the tables on Djokovic; made it 4-4, 4-5, 6-5 and then 7-5. It was an amazing set, and gave the clearest indication that the Cup was beckoning the Briton.
Djokovic, who was known to a fierce fighter who comes to behind, just couldn't do it. There were double faults and volleys going long. It just didn't seem to be working for the Serb.
And, in the way the Championship final should be, points never came easy. A befitting finale to a tumultuous fortnight.
But what an irony that Murray's coach is Ivan Lendl, who never won the Wimbledon, and worst, he once famously said, "Grass is for cows."
Well done, Murray!
Finally, Andy Murray got it; remarkably in a three-setter that looked like a five-setter.
For a long time, I wanted to Andy Murray to win. He was an underdog, but not of late. He won in the Olympics and US Open; and as the 2nd seed today, he had to get the Cup, for everything was going in his way.
Luckily the match wasn't a one-sided one. The No 1 seed Novak Djokovic was giving a stiff resistance. It was a battle of equals -- long and gruelling volleys that averaged 20+ strokes, deuce after deuce after deuce; service breaks after service breaks; three missed Championship points and finally, Murray got the better of his opponent.
The first indicator was the way Murray broke and got the first set. Then in the 2nd set Murray was 1-4 down, and came back to turn the tables on Djokovic; made it 4-4, 4-5, 6-5 and then 7-5. It was an amazing set, and gave the clearest indication that the Cup was beckoning the Briton.
Djokovic, who was known to a fierce fighter who comes to behind, just couldn't do it. There were double faults and volleys going long. It just didn't seem to be working for the Serb.
And, in the way the Championship final should be, points never came easy. A befitting finale to a tumultuous fortnight.
But what an irony that Murray's coach is Ivan Lendl, who never won the Wimbledon, and worst, he once famously said, "Grass is for cows."
Well done, Murray!
Saturday 6 July 2013
Lisicki, you did well; there’s always next year!
(Crossposted from Kaleidoscope)
Finally, the favourite lost. But today's 2013 Wimbledon Ladies Championship final wasn't like anything before.
Marion Bartoli and Sabine Lisicki had never won the Cup before. Both were nervous. Finally, what mattered was, who got over the nerves first, and kept the momentum going. And it was Bartoli, the better player, who hadn’t lost a single set in the entire tournament.
My favourite though was Lisicki. Because she was playing excellent tennis; she wasn't ready to lose, the quiet fighter, who likes to come from behind when all seemed lost. The route she took to reach Centre Court today is a testament to her grit, tenacity, resilience, and above all, her tennis. And what an achievement for her to be as close to winning the cup, as she was today.
Bartoli may not have beaten Serena Williams or Agnieszka Radwanska. That went to the credit of her opponent Lisicki. But the French champion too was etching a similar route on another side to reach the Centre Court.
Bartoli was cool, she seemed to be more in control of her emotions, and her nerves. Why not, she was there, at the Centre Court, battling for the coveted Venus Rosewater Dish, six years ago. She knew what it was like to be at the last mile.
As the match got off to a start, it very much looked like it wasn't Lisicki's day. It was the French girl who seemed to be holding on. One clear indicator was the body language. Bartoli had been there before and it showed. She pumped her fist in the first set as if she was well and truly on her way to the Cup. Lisicki looked defensive. She served some powerful aces and forced Bartoli into unforced errors with a few breathtaking crosscourt volleys. But many of her shots were long. And she went down 1-6 in the first set in 30 minutes flat.
In the third game of the second set, the first point Bartoli won wasn't actually hers. It was wide. It was clear to the naked eye and it was clearer from the Hawk's eye. But Lisicki, already rattled by the way the first set went, missed the chance to challenge it. I thought, that was a crucial turning point.
Still, the 2nd set gave Lisicki hope. She was holding on. But, suddenly, she collapsed into a bout of double faults. And, in a scene, one wouldn't see very often in a Championship match, in the fifth game of the 2nd set, Lisicki hid behind the racket strings and dissolved into tears. That said it all. And I thought that was it.
But, there was an unbelievable flicker of hope. When all seemed lost, Lisicki was playing some excellent tennis. There were some stunning aces; and the placements and the volleys were just right, and getting her the much-needed points. I wondered why couldn't she have come up with those before. She even saved two Championship points. Commentators were beginning to talk about what could be one of those unprecedented comebacks in the history of Wimbledon!
But it was too little, too late.
For a second time, Bartoli served for the match and got it. 6-1, 6-4. And, again in a scene, which we may not see very often, Lisicki broke down during the customary post-match interview, unable to complete her sentence. But she had summed it up rightly: she was overwhelmed by the occasion.
Finally, as any sportsperson would know, it's not the game alone that matters, but it's the emotions and nerves too. All along, Lisicki seemed to be the player who had that edge, who could surprise with the power of her serve and the accuracy of her shots. But Bartoli was the more experienced, who played better tennis, who strategised for the winner, who kept the cool, who had emotions in control, who seemed to know it all.
Well done, girls, Marion and Sabine. All-England Club has a new champion. Congratulations, Marion Bartoli.
Finally, the favourite lost. But today's 2013 Wimbledon Ladies Championship final wasn't like anything before.
Marion Bartoli and Sabine Lisicki had never won the Cup before. Both were nervous. Finally, what mattered was, who got over the nerves first, and kept the momentum going. And it was Bartoli, the better player, who hadn’t lost a single set in the entire tournament.
My favourite though was Lisicki. Because she was playing excellent tennis; she wasn't ready to lose, the quiet fighter, who likes to come from behind when all seemed lost. The route she took to reach Centre Court today is a testament to her grit, tenacity, resilience, and above all, her tennis. And what an achievement for her to be as close to winning the cup, as she was today.
Bartoli may not have beaten Serena Williams or Agnieszka Radwanska. That went to the credit of her opponent Lisicki. But the French champion too was etching a similar route on another side to reach the Centre Court.
Bartoli was cool, she seemed to be more in control of her emotions, and her nerves. Why not, she was there, at the Centre Court, battling for the coveted Venus Rosewater Dish, six years ago. She knew what it was like to be at the last mile.
As the match got off to a start, it very much looked like it wasn't Lisicki's day. It was the French girl who seemed to be holding on. One clear indicator was the body language. Bartoli had been there before and it showed. She pumped her fist in the first set as if she was well and truly on her way to the Cup. Lisicki looked defensive. She served some powerful aces and forced Bartoli into unforced errors with a few breathtaking crosscourt volleys. But many of her shots were long. And she went down 1-6 in the first set in 30 minutes flat.
In the third game of the second set, the first point Bartoli won wasn't actually hers. It was wide. It was clear to the naked eye and it was clearer from the Hawk's eye. But Lisicki, already rattled by the way the first set went, missed the chance to challenge it. I thought, that was a crucial turning point.
Still, the 2nd set gave Lisicki hope. She was holding on. But, suddenly, she collapsed into a bout of double faults. And, in a scene, one wouldn't see very often in a Championship match, in the fifth game of the 2nd set, Lisicki hid behind the racket strings and dissolved into tears. That said it all. And I thought that was it.
But, there was an unbelievable flicker of hope. When all seemed lost, Lisicki was playing some excellent tennis. There were some stunning aces; and the placements and the volleys were just right, and getting her the much-needed points. I wondered why couldn't she have come up with those before. She even saved two Championship points. Commentators were beginning to talk about what could be one of those unprecedented comebacks in the history of Wimbledon!
But it was too little, too late.
For a second time, Bartoli served for the match and got it. 6-1, 6-4. And, again in a scene, which we may not see very often, Lisicki broke down during the customary post-match interview, unable to complete her sentence. But she had summed it up rightly: she was overwhelmed by the occasion.
Finally, as any sportsperson would know, it's not the game alone that matters, but it's the emotions and nerves too. All along, Lisicki seemed to be the player who had that edge, who could surprise with the power of her serve and the accuracy of her shots. But Bartoli was the more experienced, who played better tennis, who strategised for the winner, who kept the cool, who had emotions in control, who seemed to know it all.
Well done, girls, Marion and Sabine. All-England Club has a new champion. Congratulations, Marion Bartoli.
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