Mitch Albom's back again with a tear-jerking story that tugs you along to depths of a story and your heart you may not be ready to explore.
Albom, a renowned sports writer (who has made his fair share of mistakes) grabbed the hearts of readers with Tuesday's with Morrie - a tribute to his college professor who taught him a final class on what it meant to live and love. That book is enough to require a box of tissues on its own.
For One More Day takes you back in the life of a former baseball player, walking you through his mistakes and losses and his ultimate decision to take his own life. It's only when he is near death that he learns what it means to be alive by getting that ever evasive "one more day" with a loved one that we just had a few more questions for.
The book is syrupy sweet and a little constricted at times, but for those who long to have a single moment, conversation or day with a loved one who is gone, it has a resounding message of hope and promise.
Albom's books are always quick reads. I attribute it to his newspaper style. The 188-page book can be read in just a few hours. The time is worth it to be able to reflect on what you would want with one more day.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The Pursuit of HappYness a little dull
Chris Gardner's The Pursuit of HappYness was an easy, quick read, if that is what you are looking for.
Author Gardner chronicles his rise from a life without a father, in an abusive home and eventually from living on the streets to becoming a wealthy and stable father and stockbroker. While his story is moving and poignant and a testimony to millions struggling to find their way, Garnder glossed over his indiscretions, poo-pooed his failures and relied solely on the words of his mother to get him through life. It seemed a little far-fetched to me, the reader.
While I admire the choices Gardner made and the promises he never broke to his son, I wonder how easy it would be to climb a ladder like Gardner in today's day and age when the paper is even more important than the experience he had so widely gathered. I wonder if we would be willing to give this man a chance like he got 20 years ago.
I just don't know if it would be that easy. I don't even know if it was as easy as Gardner made it sound. It's a good story if you want to believe it.
Author Gardner chronicles his rise from a life without a father, in an abusive home and eventually from living on the streets to becoming a wealthy and stable father and stockbroker. While his story is moving and poignant and a testimony to millions struggling to find their way, Garnder glossed over his indiscretions, poo-pooed his failures and relied solely on the words of his mother to get him through life. It seemed a little far-fetched to me, the reader.
While I admire the choices Gardner made and the promises he never broke to his son, I wonder how easy it would be to climb a ladder like Gardner in today's day and age when the paper is even more important than the experience he had so widely gathered. I wonder if we would be willing to give this man a chance like he got 20 years ago.
I just don't know if it would be that easy. I don't even know if it was as easy as Gardner made it sound. It's a good story if you want to believe it.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Prozac Nation enough to drive you to Zoloft
I just completed Elizabeth Wurtzel's "Prozac Nation." May I have a Zoloft, please.
The 300-page memoir is a diet of depression roughage. The word pain is used incessantly to describe Wurtzel's life of drowning under the "black wave" of deep, deep depression. While many Americans, including myself, can relate to Wurtzel's despair, but some of us have to question her approach and lack of perspective. As she spent time cutting herself in her junior high school's locker room during lunch, she was shielding herself from experiencing life or as she says "gaining perspective."
I feel for Wurtzel, but sometimes I just wish she'd pull her head out of her butt and and realize that she had opportunities before her others only dream of. A semester in London, an internship in Dallas, an opportunity to write for Rolling Stone, Seventeen and more. Yet, she was willing to throw it all away even when she had a caring therapist who was ready to do everything it took to make her better, she still took the final step and made an attempt to take her life. THEN she laughed about it.
By the end of the book, I was well ready for it to be over. Her depression was so overly expressed, I was depressed.
While the epilogue and afterword made interesting points about the increasing diagnosis of depression in America today and even the trivialization of the disease that affects millions of people, it was not enough to bring a reader out of the darkness Wurtzel had painted.
Reviews called Wurtzel's book important, smart, real and truthful. I call Wurtzel's work excruciatingly redundant, overworked and ploy filled. I don't doubt Wurtzel's pain, I just doubt her reason to write this book and expose all of us to her utter despair. She claims she wanted to be true to the darkness that filled her. In fact she was true to her self-serving, self-absorbed nature that led her to the path of depression to begin with.
Pass the Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil, please.
The 300-page memoir is a diet of depression roughage. The word pain is used incessantly to describe Wurtzel's life of drowning under the "black wave" of deep, deep depression. While many Americans, including myself, can relate to Wurtzel's despair, but some of us have to question her approach and lack of perspective. As she spent time cutting herself in her junior high school's locker room during lunch, she was shielding herself from experiencing life or as she says "gaining perspective."
I feel for Wurtzel, but sometimes I just wish she'd pull her head out of her butt and and realize that she had opportunities before her others only dream of. A semester in London, an internship in Dallas, an opportunity to write for Rolling Stone, Seventeen and more. Yet, she was willing to throw it all away even when she had a caring therapist who was ready to do everything it took to make her better, she still took the final step and made an attempt to take her life. THEN she laughed about it.
By the end of the book, I was well ready for it to be over. Her depression was so overly expressed, I was depressed.
While the epilogue and afterword made interesting points about the increasing diagnosis of depression in America today and even the trivialization of the disease that affects millions of people, it was not enough to bring a reader out of the darkness Wurtzel had painted.
Reviews called Wurtzel's book important, smart, real and truthful. I call Wurtzel's work excruciatingly redundant, overworked and ploy filled. I don't doubt Wurtzel's pain, I just doubt her reason to write this book and expose all of us to her utter despair. She claims she wanted to be true to the darkness that filled her. In fact she was true to her self-serving, self-absorbed nature that led her to the path of depression to begin with.
Pass the Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil, please.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Freedom Writers teaches tolerance
If you haven't seen the movie, save your money and buy the book "Freedom Writers" - a collection of diary entries from Long Beach students and their teacher Erin Gruwell in the wake of the Rodney King riots and continued gang warfare on the California streets where the students live.
The book is gripping in its personal accounts from the powerful voices of teens living in an "undeclared" war zone. They draw parallels to Anne Frank's life during World War II and that of 15-year-old writer and survivor of the Bosnian genocide Zlata.
Never is there a dull journal entry as you follow the students and their teacher from freshman year through graduation and all the people they meet and books they read. For Gruwell, who was giving the lowest of the low students - the ones not expected to graduate or even make it through the year, the four years was spent inspiring new ways to educate, enlighten and reach out to her 150 students who at the beginning couldn't be bothered with English or reading when most had to worry about getting home without getting shot and then worry that there would be food to eat when they did get home.
The book illustrates the progress these students make under their teacher's leadership - from believing that she would only last one month to believing that she could help them change the world. The students go from believing that they will live and die in the projects to attending colleges - many on scholarship and becoming heroes and leaders for other students in the gang-torn West coast.
The book is powerful and makes any reader want to pick up a pen and write for justice like the Freedom Writers themselves.
The book is gripping in its personal accounts from the powerful voices of teens living in an "undeclared" war zone. They draw parallels to Anne Frank's life during World War II and that of 15-year-old writer and survivor of the Bosnian genocide Zlata.
Never is there a dull journal entry as you follow the students and their teacher from freshman year through graduation and all the people they meet and books they read. For Gruwell, who was giving the lowest of the low students - the ones not expected to graduate or even make it through the year, the four years was spent inspiring new ways to educate, enlighten and reach out to her 150 students who at the beginning couldn't be bothered with English or reading when most had to worry about getting home without getting shot and then worry that there would be food to eat when they did get home.
The book illustrates the progress these students make under their teacher's leadership - from believing that she would only last one month to believing that she could help them change the world. The students go from believing that they will live and die in the projects to attending colleges - many on scholarship and becoming heroes and leaders for other students in the gang-torn West coast.
The book is powerful and makes any reader want to pick up a pen and write for justice like the Freedom Writers themselves.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
"Comeback" hard to put down
Imagine living on the streets at the age of 15 when you know you have a loving family and warm bed to go home to. Imagine the fear of not knowing where your daughter is, who she is with or what she is doing for months on end? Imagine carrying around so much guilt and shame for the treatment you received at the hands of a loved one as a toddler that you can't function in daily life and must drown your fears, hatred, sorrow and other emotions under the thick layers of drugs and alcohol.
These are things that "Comeback" asks you to imagine. The memoir, written by mother-daughter team Claire and Mia Fontaine, chronicles the struggle of the team to overcome Mia's molestation at the hands of her biological father when she was a toddler and also the dramatic twist Mia made with her life at age 15 when she ran away after feeling she could no longer live the dual life of a happy Mia on the outside while the shame and fear of her molestation turned into a dark, drug dependant teen who hated the world.
The book isn't all dark and twisty, it shows Mia and Claire on the path to recovery through a questioned school in the Czech Republic Morava. The path isn't easy - it is scattered with pitfalls, steps forward and back and a lot of inner reflection. As a reader, I had to wonder if I would have the courage to undergo the immense self examination that Mia and Claire endure to save Mia's life as well as their mother-daughter relationship.
The book is gripping and one that should be read by any parent with an angst ridden teen or someone who thinks one day they may want children. Sometimes the road of parenthood is not easy and as badly as we strive to protect our children by surrounding them with love and affection, evil can creep in from the least expected places and destroy the precarious balance of a parent-child bond, even if it takes years to manifest.
Claire and Mia should be lauded for their bravery to share their gripping story with others. They showed their souls, dirt and all to the world and were prepared to take the judgement. Not many people would be so courageous.
"Comeback" is a book that keeps readers tied to the pages and filled with awe at what can happen in today's world of drugs and drinking among teens and the drastic measures some parents must seek to save their child from falling off the edge.
These are things that "Comeback" asks you to imagine. The memoir, written by mother-daughter team Claire and Mia Fontaine, chronicles the struggle of the team to overcome Mia's molestation at the hands of her biological father when she was a toddler and also the dramatic twist Mia made with her life at age 15 when she ran away after feeling she could no longer live the dual life of a happy Mia on the outside while the shame and fear of her molestation turned into a dark, drug dependant teen who hated the world.
The book isn't all dark and twisty, it shows Mia and Claire on the path to recovery through a questioned school in the Czech Republic Morava. The path isn't easy - it is scattered with pitfalls, steps forward and back and a lot of inner reflection. As a reader, I had to wonder if I would have the courage to undergo the immense self examination that Mia and Claire endure to save Mia's life as well as their mother-daughter relationship.
The book is gripping and one that should be read by any parent with an angst ridden teen or someone who thinks one day they may want children. Sometimes the road of parenthood is not easy and as badly as we strive to protect our children by surrounding them with love and affection, evil can creep in from the least expected places and destroy the precarious balance of a parent-child bond, even if it takes years to manifest.
Claire and Mia should be lauded for their bravery to share their gripping story with others. They showed their souls, dirt and all to the world and were prepared to take the judgement. Not many people would be so courageous.
"Comeback" is a book that keeps readers tied to the pages and filled with awe at what can happen in today's world of drugs and drinking among teens and the drastic measures some parents must seek to save their child from falling off the edge.
19 Minutes not worth the hours of reading
I love author Jodi Piccoult. I think that was established when I blogged about "My Sister's Keeper," but her latest book "19 Minutes" left me disappointed and disillusioned with the "namebrand" author, as she refers to herself.
"19 Minutes chronicles the moments of a school shooting that killed 10 people and wounded another 19 students and teachers. The book is graphic in it's carnage. Piccoult's strong imagery allows the reader to see the fear, blood, smoke and carnage that was laid in a small-town school. She chronicles the events leading up to the tipping point in the 17-year-old shooter Peter and as is always Piccoult's style, she throws in a twist at the end that she doesn't think the reader is expecting.
But, Piccoult's writing style in all her famous-ness, has become formulaic. If you've read more than three of her books, you see the romance of the plot written within the first chapter, thought it won't actually develop until half-way through the text. And if you are an insightful reader, you know the twist is coming long before it occurs in the final chapters of the book.
The ending itself was a disappointment. Piccoult doesn't sugar-coat the reality of school bullying and what it means to take a life in revenge. Peter's penalties are real and the end that he takes is selfish and easy - for both the character and the author.
Josie, the book's main character, is poorly drawn and difficult to identify with. Piccoult doesn't draw this character as strongly as she has in past novels and it shows. With glimpses into an abusive relationship as well as elements of a loving home life, it is difficult for the reader to understand where Josie comes from with her feelings. Piccoult needed to give the readers more of Josie, more of herself, to make her plot as vivid as "My Sister's Keeper" and other books like "Keeping Faith."
"19 Minutes" just wasn't worth the hours of reading for me. Sorry Jodi.
"19 Minutes chronicles the moments of a school shooting that killed 10 people and wounded another 19 students and teachers. The book is graphic in it's carnage. Piccoult's strong imagery allows the reader to see the fear, blood, smoke and carnage that was laid in a small-town school. She chronicles the events leading up to the tipping point in the 17-year-old shooter Peter and as is always Piccoult's style, she throws in a twist at the end that she doesn't think the reader is expecting.
But, Piccoult's writing style in all her famous-ness, has become formulaic. If you've read more than three of her books, you see the romance of the plot written within the first chapter, thought it won't actually develop until half-way through the text. And if you are an insightful reader, you know the twist is coming long before it occurs in the final chapters of the book.
The ending itself was a disappointment. Piccoult doesn't sugar-coat the reality of school bullying and what it means to take a life in revenge. Peter's penalties are real and the end that he takes is selfish and easy - for both the character and the author.
Josie, the book's main character, is poorly drawn and difficult to identify with. Piccoult doesn't draw this character as strongly as she has in past novels and it shows. With glimpses into an abusive relationship as well as elements of a loving home life, it is difficult for the reader to understand where Josie comes from with her feelings. Piccoult needed to give the readers more of Josie, more of herself, to make her plot as vivid as "My Sister's Keeper" and other books like "Keeping Faith."
"19 Minutes" just wasn't worth the hours of reading for me. Sorry Jodi.
The Kite Runner - a book of highs and lows
"Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini took me on a trip through nightmares and hope not to mention a journey from Afghanistan to America and back again.
First time novelist Hosseini captured his readers like a pro. His story line was gripping, harrowing and at times disturbing. The book was difficult to put down, but at times the contrasts were so stark and devastating in war-torn Afghanistan that the book had to be set aside.
The reader cried for Hassan and then for Hassan's son and marveled at the ability to keep secrets that tore long-held beliefs to the core. The reader struggles to like Amir, his childish selfishness set into action a chain of events that nearly destroyed a young man's life, all because he was of a different ethnicity. In the end, love conquers bigotry and even the Taliban, but not without a grave price.
The book is worth the read. Have tissues handy and be prepared for sorrow, anger and disbelief of the glimpse you see into the Afghan life and the aftermath of Taliban control. The book isn't pretty, nor is it a happy ending, but it mirrors a life that many Americans are struggling to understand.
First time novelist Hosseini captured his readers like a pro. His story line was gripping, harrowing and at times disturbing. The book was difficult to put down, but at times the contrasts were so stark and devastating in war-torn Afghanistan that the book had to be set aside.
The reader cried for Hassan and then for Hassan's son and marveled at the ability to keep secrets that tore long-held beliefs to the core. The reader struggles to like Amir, his childish selfishness set into action a chain of events that nearly destroyed a young man's life, all because he was of a different ethnicity. In the end, love conquers bigotry and even the Taliban, but not without a grave price.
The book is worth the read. Have tissues handy and be prepared for sorrow, anger and disbelief of the glimpse you see into the Afghan life and the aftermath of Taliban control. The book isn't pretty, nor is it a happy ending, but it mirrors a life that many Americans are struggling to understand.
Friday, March 9, 2007
Keep "My Sister's Keeper"
Has one book ever made you rush out literally the next day to buy another work by the author? Have you ever been so moved by one writer's work to wish to devour every word they've written? That is how I felt when I completed "My Sister's Keeper," by Jodi Picoult.
The last time I was so moved by a book that I didn't stop crying for at least a half hour after completing it was a pre-teen reading Katherine Patterson's "Bridge to Terabithia."
Picoult created a story that touched reader's hearts and troubled their minds. You couldn't help reading the book and wondering, "Would I do that?" "What would I do."
Anna, the 13-year-old child who brings a lawsuit against her family for medical independence, is at once believable and unimaginable. Her maturity supersedes her years, but then again, she never had a childhood. The reader sympathizes with Anna as she struggles to identify herself away from her leukemia-plagued sister Kate, who has needed everything from her sister from cord blood to now her kidney to survive. The story is riveting as you see it from the eyes of the mother, Sara, father, Brian, and brother Jesse. Peripheral characters Julia, a court-appointed advisor, and Campbell, Anna's lawyer, round out the eyes, ears and hearts of the story and provide dramatic relief to what could be an overwhelmingly suffocating story.
The story is one that chills you to the core as you consider the medical mysteries we still face and the answers we have at our fingertips, such as genetic modification of embryos to create "perfect matches" or more. You can't read "My Sister's Keeper" without being forced to think which I believe is one of the most telling attributes of a good book. Does it make you want to discuss it? Are there questions that aren't left unanswered by the book, but by yourself?
Thank you, Jodi Picoult for making me think and making me ask questions I haven't yet found the answers for.
The last time I was so moved by a book that I didn't stop crying for at least a half hour after completing it was a pre-teen reading Katherine Patterson's "Bridge to Terabithia."
Picoult created a story that touched reader's hearts and troubled their minds. You couldn't help reading the book and wondering, "Would I do that?" "What would I do."
Anna, the 13-year-old child who brings a lawsuit against her family for medical independence, is at once believable and unimaginable. Her maturity supersedes her years, but then again, she never had a childhood. The reader sympathizes with Anna as she struggles to identify herself away from her leukemia-plagued sister Kate, who has needed everything from her sister from cord blood to now her kidney to survive. The story is riveting as you see it from the eyes of the mother, Sara, father, Brian, and brother Jesse. Peripheral characters Julia, a court-appointed advisor, and Campbell, Anna's lawyer, round out the eyes, ears and hearts of the story and provide dramatic relief to what could be an overwhelmingly suffocating story.
The story is one that chills you to the core as you consider the medical mysteries we still face and the answers we have at our fingertips, such as genetic modification of embryos to create "perfect matches" or more. You can't read "My Sister's Keeper" without being forced to think which I believe is one of the most telling attributes of a good book. Does it make you want to discuss it? Are there questions that aren't left unanswered by the book, but by yourself?
Thank you, Jodi Picoult for making me think and making me ask questions I haven't yet found the answers for.
John Berendt - oh, to have eight years to travel
I just completed two works by John Berendt - "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and "The City of Falling Angels." Both billed as travelogues, the novels capture more of the location through the people Berendt meets than the average tourist might.
For example, Berendt spends eight years traveling back and forth between New York City and Savannah in "Midnight." Who gets to spend eight years writing a travel book? Berendt's years weren't spent all in vain enjoying the sweet Georgia peaches though. During his time in the South the characters he encounters, oops I mean people, are more telling than an description of Bonaventure's cemetery could ever be.
People like Joe Odom weave in and out of the sounds and sights of Savannah crafting a story that begins with the smoothness of fine whiskey, blasts in the middle like a gun shot (wait it was a gun shot) and ends like the South during the Civil War, a heroic battalion refusing to die. Then there are the juxtapositions of a brassy Chablis and the Southern gentrified Lee Adler - making the twists and turns of what you expect to be a sleepy story feel more like a rollicking ride through highs and lows of a society that refuses to live by anyone's rules, even their own.
The City of Falling Angels was interesting and well crafted, but I'm glad I read it first. Had I read it after "Midnight," I would have been disappointed in the ride. While Venice provided a romantic backdrop for the story of a treacherous fire, it's characters proved more scholarly than friendly. Living in their Venitian palaces, the characters of Berendt's second novel seemed more unattainable and even less realistic than those in "Midnight."
The world in which they lived was well described, but not as vivid as the squares of Savannah in "Midnight." The carnival nights of Venice didn't compare to the luster of the Southern city's St. Patrick's Day Parade.
Comparison's aside, Berendt's book was fascinating in the details he extracted from the people that filled its pages. The simple things he researched for the book were impressive. The look into the glass making history of Venice and even the family feuds that mar most business histories was endearing.
The overall novel's thread of fire of Fenice was sometime lost along the rambling canals' way as Berendt took breaks to introduce new Venitians or expatriates or others along the way. The story was loosely held together and if not for Berendt's finely detailed and enchanting travels off the trail, the novel would have been lost.
In all, though, I rank "Midnight" above "Falling Angels," as a more masterful and intoxicating work.
For example, Berendt spends eight years traveling back and forth between New York City and Savannah in "Midnight." Who gets to spend eight years writing a travel book? Berendt's years weren't spent all in vain enjoying the sweet Georgia peaches though. During his time in the South the characters he encounters, oops I mean people, are more telling than an description of Bonaventure's cemetery could ever be.
People like Joe Odom weave in and out of the sounds and sights of Savannah crafting a story that begins with the smoothness of fine whiskey, blasts in the middle like a gun shot (wait it was a gun shot) and ends like the South during the Civil War, a heroic battalion refusing to die. Then there are the juxtapositions of a brassy Chablis and the Southern gentrified Lee Adler - making the twists and turns of what you expect to be a sleepy story feel more like a rollicking ride through highs and lows of a society that refuses to live by anyone's rules, even their own.
The City of Falling Angels was interesting and well crafted, but I'm glad I read it first. Had I read it after "Midnight," I would have been disappointed in the ride. While Venice provided a romantic backdrop for the story of a treacherous fire, it's characters proved more scholarly than friendly. Living in their Venitian palaces, the characters of Berendt's second novel seemed more unattainable and even less realistic than those in "Midnight."
The world in which they lived was well described, but not as vivid as the squares of Savannah in "Midnight." The carnival nights of Venice didn't compare to the luster of the Southern city's St. Patrick's Day Parade.
Comparison's aside, Berendt's book was fascinating in the details he extracted from the people that filled its pages. The simple things he researched for the book were impressive. The look into the glass making history of Venice and even the family feuds that mar most business histories was endearing.
The overall novel's thread of fire of Fenice was sometime lost along the rambling canals' way as Berendt took breaks to introduce new Venitians or expatriates or others along the way. The story was loosely held together and if not for Berendt's finely detailed and enchanting travels off the trail, the novel would have been lost.
In all, though, I rank "Midnight" above "Falling Angels," as a more masterful and intoxicating work.
About the Book Bashing Blog
Ok - I'm not really a book basher. I am a book lover. Reading books is what I do. Aside from my work, family and friends, reading is what I love and I decided that as quickly as I run through books, I should share what I think of them with the general public - so that's what this is - my book blog. Consider it my grown up book report, but with more fun and less grammatical structure (Sorry, Mrs. Redden - my high school English teacher.)
This is where I can vent, rage, cry or rave about my latest literary conquest. I get to do it verbally with my book club that meets once a month, and I usually fill my husband in each time I finish a book, but even he has said I need to find an outlet for the emotions that some books bring out in me. That's why I am blogging. After I finished the book "Suite Francaise" by Irene Nemirovsky last night and bored my hubby to tears with my ranting about how such a beautiful work could go unfinished because of the pure evil in this world (see previous post), I realized I needed a place to pour it all out.
I hope whomever reads this out on the World Wide Web enjoys it. Leave me comments. Tell me if you don't agree. Tell me what you are reading. I'll tell you!
This is where I can vent, rage, cry or rave about my latest literary conquest. I get to do it verbally with my book club that meets once a month, and I usually fill my husband in each time I finish a book, but even he has said I need to find an outlet for the emotions that some books bring out in me. That's why I am blogging. After I finished the book "Suite Francaise" by Irene Nemirovsky last night and bored my hubby to tears with my ranting about how such a beautiful work could go unfinished because of the pure evil in this world (see previous post), I realized I needed a place to pour it all out.
I hope whomever reads this out on the World Wide Web enjoys it. Leave me comments. Tell me if you don't agree. Tell me what you are reading. I'll tell you!
Sensational simplicity in Suite Francaise
I hate Hitler.
I know that's how millions feel and it's how I've felt since as a child I first learned of the horrors of World War II, but last night when I completed the book Suite Francaise, I hated the evil villain of world history anymore.
He stole the lives of millions of Jews, Gypsys, homosexuals and more and last night he stole the words of an amazing author and her uncompleted manuscript.
Irene Nemirovsky's work in Suite Francaise was pure genius. Although she only completed two of the five sections that were to be a complete set, the moments she captured in black and white on a page of cramped handwriting shown a light on the raw emotion, humanity and reality of life in France during World War II.
Reading Nemirovsky's notes on her work, included in the recent English translation, was riveting. Her eye for contrast and simplicity helped her to weave a tale of life, death, fear and even love in an environment unknown to many readers.
Her simply constructed scenes are like opening the curtain to an elaborate set and watching life reveal itself in moments of reality. She captures the children scampering in a long deserted garden, and the women in black who simply want a photo album and a few items from the home they once treasured.
She illustrated how love can cross barriers of society and family and develop in the most alarming, yet obvious places. Her words - each one - whisper of a life lived in the time of her characters, of experiences survived, of choices made and most of all of truth.
Completing Suite Francaise is disappointing. The book, you think shouldn't end. And it shouldn't. At least not where it does. Three more parts were to reveal for all us what happened to Lucille, Jean-Marie, Hubert, Corte, the Michauds and the others. Nemirovsky pulls her reader in, touching them on the emotional level with the fear of war, the physical level with her descriptions of the difficult life they faced - limited food (even the obsession of food among those fleeing Paris) - and the mental level as the readers struggles along with the characters over the occupying forces, the threatening Bolsheviks and the precarious promise of rescue from England and the United States.
Without Nemirovsky there can be no end to the book. Hitler stole her from her two daughters, her husband and her readers. Dying in a concentration camp for having Jewish grandparents, the Catholic and two-decade French resident Nemirovsky left her daughters with a gift in the form of a manuscript that the world is just beginning to recognize. The value of the glimpse she provided to all of us, even now, six decades after World War II restructured the globe, is one that should be read, celebrated and remembered.
Hitler stole the ending to Suite Francaise, but Nemirovsky captured her world for all of us to remember.
I know that's how millions feel and it's how I've felt since as a child I first learned of the horrors of World War II, but last night when I completed the book Suite Francaise, I hated the evil villain of world history anymore.
He stole the lives of millions of Jews, Gypsys, homosexuals and more and last night he stole the words of an amazing author and her uncompleted manuscript.
Irene Nemirovsky's work in Suite Francaise was pure genius. Although she only completed two of the five sections that were to be a complete set, the moments she captured in black and white on a page of cramped handwriting shown a light on the raw emotion, humanity and reality of life in France during World War II.
Reading Nemirovsky's notes on her work, included in the recent English translation, was riveting. Her eye for contrast and simplicity helped her to weave a tale of life, death, fear and even love in an environment unknown to many readers.
Her simply constructed scenes are like opening the curtain to an elaborate set and watching life reveal itself in moments of reality. She captures the children scampering in a long deserted garden, and the women in black who simply want a photo album and a few items from the home they once treasured.
She illustrated how love can cross barriers of society and family and develop in the most alarming, yet obvious places. Her words - each one - whisper of a life lived in the time of her characters, of experiences survived, of choices made and most of all of truth.
Completing Suite Francaise is disappointing. The book, you think shouldn't end. And it shouldn't. At least not where it does. Three more parts were to reveal for all us what happened to Lucille, Jean-Marie, Hubert, Corte, the Michauds and the others. Nemirovsky pulls her reader in, touching them on the emotional level with the fear of war, the physical level with her descriptions of the difficult life they faced - limited food (even the obsession of food among those fleeing Paris) - and the mental level as the readers struggles along with the characters over the occupying forces, the threatening Bolsheviks and the precarious promise of rescue from England and the United States.
Without Nemirovsky there can be no end to the book. Hitler stole her from her two daughters, her husband and her readers. Dying in a concentration camp for having Jewish grandparents, the Catholic and two-decade French resident Nemirovsky left her daughters with a gift in the form of a manuscript that the world is just beginning to recognize. The value of the glimpse she provided to all of us, even now, six decades after World War II restructured the globe, is one that should be read, celebrated and remembered.
Hitler stole the ending to Suite Francaise, but Nemirovsky captured her world for all of us to remember.
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