TGIF (3)…Taking it Personal

This Friday’s Question:

Taking it Personal: Which books have effected you on a personal level and lingered in your mind long after you closed the pages?

I would just like to say…I hate questions like this. Anyone with me? People who are readers get asked questions in this vein all the time. “What’s your favorite book?”, “What’s the best book you’ve ever read?”, and the question above: “Which books have affected you on a personal level?”. Blah. HaHa.

My problem: I have such a hard time picking! I have books that I think about because I loved the characters so much, like a Twilight, or the Tea Rose Series. After the Hunger Games I couldn’t read anything for two whole days because I had no idea it was a trilogy. The disbelief that hit me when I realized that this was not the ending for these characters stumped me for days…I NEEDED that next book…I NEEDED it NOW…NOT in a year!

But none of those books effected any change in me. No soul shift. No altered world view. As good as these all of these books were and as attached as I became I was basically done when they were done. Sometimes I do a reread (HINT: Join us for the rest of the Twilight Series starting on Monday!). But these rereads are more about escaping to a fantasy than anything else.

Thus I pick a toughie. I pick a book a lot of people have hated. This book has given me more pride as a reader than any other…

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

I know! Most English majors out there are cringing. But I can explain. I’ve read this book, easily, 5 times. The first time it was like Greek to me. Sure, in that intro to English class I filled out the questions, took the notes, spark-noted a bit. I thought I understood…

I didn’t understand. The change in the painting. The shifting of the tree. The purple triangle. Gibberish I tell you! Until my senior year. Ms. Wolf had captured my academic imagination. I decided to do a thesis on her. Yep, as if To The Lighthouse wasn’t enough for most of us, I signed on to read all of her books…and the journals…and all those remnants of half written work. I began To The Lighthouse yet again, except this time…it made sense. It was beautiful, lyrical, touching. And I knew what that darn purple triangle meant! The most amazing Eureka! moment I’ve ever had.

So there’s my answer. It wasn’t an easy book, or an easy path. In fact I’d recommend the title to only a select few readers. It’s a confusing book, convoluted in its simplicity. It’s never been an enjoyable read. Always seeming to me to be more of a literary puzzle than a rainy day read. But to conquer it. To see Lily find herself…and understand her art. I still feel an inordinate amount of pride in this accomplishment. So much so that I named my dog after her.

Yep, little Lily has never been a flower…instead a character from a literary classic. One that will always hold a special place on my bookshelves.

So I ask you…Which book(s) have affected you the most?

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The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman

Review:

The layered tales in The Red Garden start as magical stories and culminate in a history of a town full of depth and feeling. It’s wonderful to see how stories from the beginning of the collection end up mentioned less and less realistically, less and less clearly, until they are part of the collective vocabulary of the town. To the modern resident they are ever-present and yet indefinable in their origins. As a reader you’ll begin to remember your own hometown folk stories. The rumors of a whirlpool in the lake, that road you didn’t drive on after midnight, even holding your breath as you biked past a certain house. Reading how Hoffman’s fictional town earned it’s legends you’ll wonder about the origins of your own.

Hoffman’s collection of stories present an extremely realistic view of a town. That being said, Hoffman’s tales do include her ever-present magical realism. A garden that turns all plants red. No matter what color a plant started as, they become blood-red for reasons exposed in the in the titular story. In another we meet a woman who may or may not have originated as a creature of the sea. Yet, while Hoffman’s blatant use of magic is enchanting, for the most part the magic in the stories is sutble…a woman and a bear who have a mother/child-like connection…a Johhny Appleseed who subsists on almost nothing…a woman who always brings you exactly what you need when you need it (like showing up on your doorstep with a basket of tomatoes when the craving hits). It’s truly the every-day magic that makes most of the stories special rather than common place. It’s that little bit of sparkle that makes a well told tale last through the generations.

Beyond the quiet enjoyment of watching a town history grow it’s the love that will keep you reading. Many of the tales follow stories of love lost and love taken. “Owl and Mouse” was one of my favorites, telling of a woman who walked her way into town and found the love of her life. The main character is a woman with her head in the clouds and her love is a blind man looking for the last adventure of his life. They have their day, and the memory of the dog forever. In “The Truth about my Mother” a child recounts the history of her mother as well as the tale of her entrance into the town and the beginnings of her second marriage. The daughter’s view is unique as she is at once a part of the story and yet, relegated to the edges of the town. Finally, my last favorite was “The Monster of Blackwell”. A love story in the theme of Beauty and the Beast with a more realistic ending. This one broke my heart in the best way possible.

This collection is a quiet work meant to be read with a cup of coffee and a comfy chair. Stories can be read singularly, but are best read continuously to build up the feeling of history…as well as remember each story correctly. At times they interlace and because many of the characters are named the same/from the same families, keeping everyone straight does present a problem. As does being aware of the passage of time. Hoffman skips around the years in a generally chronological manner, but heeds no structure to how long the gaps between stories are. Warning to the wise: take a note of the dates that start each story, it’ll help to orient you in time and with the family generations.

Rating: 6/10

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I need a break…A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

I work with teens for roughly 8 hours a day, I read a lot of YA…Believe me, there are times when I can’t listen/read to one more teen-centric drama! They whine, they complain about things that really aren’t all that important in the long run, sometimes they giggle really really loud, they ask stupid questions (yes, they exist).

I hit a wall sometime around last Friday afternoon…NO MORE TEENS. I needed some adult book action. Something vague and twisted, something with big words, something from a section called ‘literature ‘and not ‘paranormal-teen-series’. I was headed up to Annapolis with my husband for a weekend at a B&B and decided to treat myself to A Reliable Wife.

I’ve had this book in queue for almost a year. A good friend said that it was just OK, that she saw the twist coming. Disappointed by the review, A Reliable Wife sat unclicked in my nook for months. Until my recent YA rebellion. On Friday I needed an adult book, and I needed it on the plane. Unwilling to pay for wifi and a new book I chose from what I had on the nook. A Reliable Wife it was.

Review:

I’m sad I waited so long for this book! It was just what I wanted this weekend. Very adult, centered on sex, lies, and longing. A love triangle worthy of a convoluted Oedipus. It was a little twisted, kinda dirty, and lyrically written. VERY anti-teen…no way to book talk this one to students…ahh, the bliss.

The book opens with Ralph Truitt waiting at the train station for his mail order bride. He has asked for “a reliable wife”. Truitt desires the opposite of his first wife. He wants someone modest, plain, and true. Thus he is reasonably shocked when the woman exiting the train is stunningly beautiful, besides her obvious disguise of modest clothing. The reader knows it’s a disguise as we’ve watched Cathrine shed her finery and throw it out the window mere minutes from the station. All is not what it seems.

Truitt is not happy with his life and wishes to start again. He wants to rectify his mistakes with and through Cathrine. Cathrine is not happy with her life either. She is outwardly searching for money and love and inwardly struggling toward something more meaningful than shallow trappings. Both have struggled through lives that did not need to be as difficult as they made them. They’ve reached the middle of their story and both want change. As intriguing as it would be to watch the two simply fall in love and fulfill one another, there is that afore mentioned twist. Truitt has a son by his first marriage. A son to whom he is not the biological father. Truitt desires to find his son and make things right with him, using Cathrine as a mediator.

I’ll agree with my friend in that the twist was not a huge surprise. You’ll see it coming. But it is not the twist that makes for the intrigue of the story. What will have you tearing through the last few pages is how this triangle of characters will choose to live their lives and who they will choose to love.

Rating: 7/10

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