Reading for Me

Let’s start with the reason I postponed this post for a few hours. Even after I finished the novel, I can’t decide how I feel about it. The writing was okay. The story was interesting. I don’t know what the problem was though….

The Paris Wife is the story of Hadley, the first wife of novelist Ernest Hemingway. While filled with historical figures and accurate events from the author’s life, the work is a fictional development of these larger than life characters. Much of the work centers around the writing of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (which just happens to be a book that holds a special place in my heart). I suppose it is this seamless movement between fact and fiction that was troubling about the book for me. I am a fan of historical fiction, but I always like to know where fact ends and fiction begins. I thought I knew a lot about Hemingway’s life. This novel just reminded me of how little I actually know and how terribly interesting and tormented Ernest Hemingway actually was.

This New York Times bestseller has been on my shelf for a few months now, but I never got around to actually picking it up. I suppose I was a little intimidated by the cover. It just looks so academic somehow. When I read “About the Author” my intimidation grew.  The bio begins with this sentence:  “Michael Gruber has a Ph.D. in marine sciences and began freelance writing while working in Washington, D.C., as a policy analyst and speechwriter for the Environmental Protection Agency.” Tell me that doesn’t sound like some serious writing is ahead.

When I finally dove into the book, I was thrilled with an intelligent novel about the world’s greatest playwright, William Shakespeare. The premise of the novel is that Shakespeare wrote an additional play about Mary, Queen of Scots that has never been seen by human eyes since the author’s death. The story line waltzes around the law offices of Intellectual Property, the basement of a New York bookstore, and the New York City Library.  Filled with characters — including powerful Russian Jew mob bosses! — the story also provides an entertaining dialogue between Shakespeare and his “cousin” written in Elizabethan English.  Add in a cryptic message and the search for the elusive manuscript and you have a really neat story on your hands.

While I was pleased with the story, what was the greatest joy was the beautiful language that Gruber used to form his tale.  Here are three of my favorite passages from the first half of the book.  These won’t give away anything from the plot, but give you a flavor of the quality of writing that is the strength of the novel.

“Perhaps he had snapped under the strain.  Professors go batty too, perhaps more often than other people, although owing to their profession their madness is less often remarked.”  (p. 44)

“I suppose we can blame Shakespeare himself for starting it, because he made up people who were more real, though false, than the people one knew.  Dick Bracegirdle understood this, which was why he set out to smash Shakespeare and all his works.  I took a history course at Columbia — Haas will recall it too, because I took it on his recommendation — a man named Charlton taught it.  It was English medieval history, and although I have expunged the Domesday Book and all the kings and queens from my mind, I recall very well his take on history in general.  He said there are three kinds of history.  The first is what really happened, and this is forever lost.  The second is what most people thought happened, and we can recover that with assiduous effort.  The third is what the people in power wanted the future to think happened, and that is 90 percent of the history in books.”  (p. 91)

“He ate when he was upset, he knew, and if he didn’t watch it he was going to look like Orson Welles, without that person’s early achievement to balance out the flab.”  (p. 199)

Every February, I anxiously look forward to the release of Jodi Picoult’s newest novel. I have read almost everything she has written and she has become my favorite living author. This year’s novel, The Storyteller, thrilled me while moving me to tears.

Sage is a baker whose face has been scarred by an auto accident that led to the death of her mother.  To deal with her grief, Sage attends a grief support group and so becomes acquainted with a charming senior citizen named Josef. As the two come to know each other, Josef requests that Sage assist him in dying. Sage cannot understand why this man is so eager to die, so she presses him for answers. Josef reveals that he was a Nazi officer in the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp. Sage’s horror is magnified as she begins to understand that it is possible that Josef was responsible for the suffering of her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor.

As the story weaves between the horror of 1940s Europe and modern day America, Picoult explores issues of forgiveness, morality, and justice in a complex tale that is filled with love and tantalizing plot twists. This complex novel is one that I certainly anticipate returning to again and again.

Being sick wore me out, so I’m a couple of days late in posting the review of my most recent read. I thoroughly enjoyed The Light Between Oceans!

The story centers around a married couple who care for a lighthouse on a remote island off the coast of Australia.  After several painful miscarriages, the unimaginable happens: a boat washes ashore bearing a dead man and a tiny baby girl wrapped in a blanket.  The baby is very much alive. The couple find themselves facing a moral dilemma:  report the child’s arrival in hopes of reconnecting her with family or raise this sea-borne child as a gift of Fate.

Lucy grows on the island and becomes the center of her parents’ world as well as the source of constant guilt over their decisions. When the child’s birth-mother is discovered, the novel takes on the question of whether it is blood or circumstances that truly connect us with our family.

The novel got off to a somewhat slow start for me, but I am certainly glad that I decided to stick with it for a few more pages! The Light Between the Oceans was another great read of the year.

I’m discovering that I’m constantly stating how much I’m enjoying the books I’m reading, so I’m going to steal an idea from the blog 101 Books.  After every 10 books completed, I’ll provide a complete ranking…..based entirely upon my opinion and preferences at that moment in time. I think it will be a fun addition to the blog.

When I first began this fun method of reading for the summer, I was rather unsure of what I would find along the way.  I am very happy to say that I discovered The 19th Wife and enjoyed every minute of it!

Ebershoff’s novel is actually 2 stories in a single novel.  At the end of the 19th century, we follow Ann Eliza – the 19th wife of Brigham Young.  As the LDS Church is in its early years, we explore the role of polygamy and its impact on the wives, children, and community.  Ann Eliza chooses to divorce her “husband” and begins a national campaign to end plural marriage.

The Firsts, a 20th century sect of the LDS, continues to practice polygamy in Utah.  A member of the community of Mesadale, BeckyLyn, has been found guilt of murdering her husband.  BeckyLyn was the 19th wife of an upstanding leader in the Firsts community.  Now it is up to her gay son, Jordan, to return home to Utah — and the community from which he was excommunicated — in order to prove her innocence.

The novel’s combination of historical figures, factual accounts, and extraordinarily conceived characters make it an excellent read that is a cut above!

4.5 out of 5 stars!