On this grey, wet, chilly Sunday morning, I
am happy to look at the coffee table in front of me and see 2 things that make
me happy: a hot cup of chai tea to wrap
my cold hands around for warmth, and a book that I am really enjoying, which I
will spend this afternoon reading, and hopefully finishing.
I finished The Vanishing Act of Esme
Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell this past week, and it proved to be far better
than I was expecting. I think last week
I wrote that it was not a “great” read, but that it was short, with a fairly
interesting storyline. Well, once I
reached the halfway point, it got really interesting, and I couldn’t put it
down! To recap, it tells the story of
woman, Iris, who runs a vintage clothing shop and who is suddenly given the
responsibility of caring for a great-aunt, Esme, whom she didn’t know existed
until a few days before. Esme has spent the
past 60 years, all of her adult life, in a mental institution, and Iris wants
to find out why this happened. It seemed
initially that the story was about Iris, and her struggles to find her way and
purpose in life, but it turned out to be about so much more, particularly about
the relationship between Esme and Kitty, Iris’ grandmother, when they were
young. At the time of the story, Kitty
is in a nursing home suffering from dementia, but her memories are offered to
the reader in snippets, jumbled and inconsistent, yet intriguing, in a “pieces
of the puzzle” sort of way. I would
highly recommend this title to anyone who enjoys character-driven novels that
deal with relationships and family secrets.
The book that is on the table in front of
me right now is The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud, a title that
we are considering for the committee I’m on.
I’m halfway through, but can’t wait to make time to finish it. This story is told from the point of view of
Nora Eldridge, an angry woman whose life plan included being an artist and having
children (husband and money optional), but who instead grew up to become the
dutiful daughter of her now deceased mother and ailing, lonely father, and favourite third-grade teacher in an
elementary school in Boston. At age 37,
Nora is despairing ever achieving anything resembling her life’s dreams,
resigned to her role as “the Woman Upstairs”, unremarkable but reliable. Then
the Shahid family enter her life. Mrs.
Shahid is a successful artist, and Mr. Shahid is exactly the type of man Nora
would fall for, but it is Reza, their eight-year-old son and student in her
class, who most captures Nora’s heart, becoming the son she never had.
She begins to live through them, separately and together, and believes
that they are the keys to attaining her dreams.
I don’t know what will happen, but something significant is surely on
the horizon, because so far, the family members have been idealized all out of
proportion, and Nora has risen so high in her expectations that she is sure to
fall far and hard. This novel reminds me
of two excellent books I’ve read in the past.
The first is What Was She Thinking?
Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller.
Remember that book? Maybe you
remember the film, with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, about a bitter elderly
teacher who becomes obsessed with the new young art teacher at her high school. This teacher begins an affair with one of her
male students, which is, of course, scandalous for the school and for the
family. The elderly teacher supports the
new teacher, and her obsession grows. It is creepy in its insidiousness, yet all-too-believable. The other book that comes to mind is We
Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, about a woman who has an ideal
marriage and no desire to have children, until she has a son, Kevin, with whom
she has difficulty bonding and who grows up to be a sociopathic teen who,
shortly before his 16th birthday, commits mass murder at his high
school. It’s not the story that is
necessarily so similar, but the writing styles are so much alike that I
sometimes feel as though Eva Kachadourian (the mother in Kevin) is
narrating instead of Nora. Both main
characters are successful women who are angry at the way their lives have been
dealt, but there is also an underlying feeling of resignation with both
characters, as though they have come to accept, however bitterly, their roles
in life. Anyway, I’m really excited to
finish it, as I’m so curious what will ultimately happen to Nora and the
Shahids. More on this book next week.
That’s all for today.
Bye for now…
Julie
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