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427. The Giver of Stars

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Aileen Schwab, Katy Fasset

Author:   Jojo Moyes

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction

400 pages, published October 8, 2019

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Set in the Depression, The Giver of Stars is the story of five women who become the Packhorse Librarians, delivering library books to the residents of rural Kentucky and changing lives (their own and others) in the process.  The main character is Alice Wright, a beautiful young British woman who marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her provincial English life.  Alice is befriended by Margery, a rugged, self-sufficient woman who advises Alice who advises Alice that “there is always a way out of a situation” when Alice’s marriage becomes interminable.  So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically.

Quotes 

“There is always a way out of a situation. Might be ugly. Might leave you feeling like the earth had gone and shifted under your feet. But there is always a way around.”

 

“She just wasn’t sure she had yet been to the place she was homesick for.”

 

“That some things are a gift, even if you don’t get to keep them.”

 

“You know the worst thing about a man hitting you?” Margery said finally. “Ain’t the hurt. It’s that in that instant you realize the truth of what it is to be a woman. That it doesn’t matter how smart you are, how much better at arguing, how much better than them period. It’s when you realize they can always shut you up with a fist. Just like that.” She mulled over it for a Monet, then straightened up , and flashed Alice a tight smile. “Course, you know that only happens till you learn to hit back harder.”

 

“There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham. • ANNA SEWELL, Black Beauty”

 

“Time flew. And each ended the night full and happy with the rare glow that comes from knowing your very being has been understood by somebody else. And that there might just be someone out there, who will only ever see the best in you.”

 

“he makes my heart flutter like a clean sheet on a long line.”

 

“And there followed a strange, elongated couple of minutes. The kind in which two people know they have to part, and don’t want to.And while neither can acknowledge it, each believes the other feels it too.”

 

“She had earned every one of her bruises and blisters, had built a new Alice over the frame of one with whom she had never felt entirely comfortable.”

 

My Take

I really enjoyed The Giver of Stars, another great book by Jojo Moyes.  Previous books by Moyes, a talented and entertaining writer, that I have read on my Quest include  After You, One Plus On, The Girl You Left Behind, Silver Bay, Still Me and Paris for One.  A foray into historical fiction, The Giver of Stars is one of Moyes’ best books.  The characters are interesting, well detailed and come to life, especially in the audio version that I listened to, and the plot definitely holds your interest.  Highly recommended.

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422. The Bluest Eye

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Marlys Lietz

Author:   Toni Morrison

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction

216 pages, published September 6, 2005

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison’s first novel and tells the story of 11 year old Pecola Breedlove.  Pecola, a poor black child from a dysfunctional family, prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as the blond, blue-eyed children in her town.

Quotes 

“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye.”

 

“We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.”

 

“And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.”

 

“guileless and without vanity,we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our own skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness.”

 

“Anger is better.  There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.”

 

“Jealousy we understood and thought natural… But envy was a strange, new feeling for us. And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.”

 

“She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing something else. Of itself it is of no consequence to one’s major scheme. A hotel room is convenient. But its convenience is limited to the time you need it while you are in that particular town on that particular business; you hope it is comfortable, but prefer, rather, that it be anoymous. It is not, after all, where you live.”

 

“All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us–all who knew her–felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used–to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.  And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.”

 

My Take

I liked, but did not love, The Bluest Eye.  While it is well written and has something to say, I found it hard to relate to the characters and was not very engaged in the story.  Also, it is depressing.

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421. The Dutch House

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Clare Telleen

Author:   Ann Patchett

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction

337 pages, published September 24, 2019

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Overdrive

Summary

The Dutch House is a book about a family that purchases an unusual and luxurious estate in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the late 1940’s.  The house proves to be the undoing of the family.  The story is told by the son Danny, as he and his older sister Maeve are exiled from the Dutch house by their stepmother after their father unexpectedly dies.  Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House tells the story of Danny and Maeve as they struggle to rise above their past.

Quotes 

“I see the past as it actually was,” Maeve said. She was looking at the trees.  But we overlay the present onto the past. “We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we’re not seeing it as the people we were, we’re seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered.”

 

“Do you think it’s possible to ever see the past as it actually was?”

 

“And so I made the decision to change. It might seem like change was impossible, given my nature and my age, but I understood exactly what there was to lose. It was chemistry all over again. The point wasn’t whether or not I liked it. The point was it had to be done.”

 

“The dinner was a huge production, with kids stashed in the den to eat off card tables like a collection of understudies who dreamed of one day breaking into the dining room.”

 

“Fluffy always said there was no greater luxury for a woman than to have a window over the sink.”

 

“Thinking about the past impeded my efforts to be decent in the present.”

 

“The biggest lie in business is that it takes money to make money, remember that. You gotta be smart, have a plan, pay attention to what’s going on around you. None of that costs a dime.”

 

“We were all so young, you know. We were still our best selves.”

 

“That night in my sister’s bed I stared at the ceiling and felt the true loss of our father. Not his money or his house, but the man I sat next to in the car. He had protected me from the world so completely that I had no idea what the world was capable of. I had never thought about him as a child. I had never asked him about the war. I had only seen him as my father, and as my father I had judged him. There was nothing to do about that now but add it to the catalog of my mistakes.”

 

“Like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns. We pretended that what we has lost was the house, not our mother, not our father. We pretended that what we had lost has been taken from us by the person who still lived inside…”

 

“There would never been an end to all the things I wished I’d asked my father.”

 

“Celeste and I had made a few halfhearted attempts to get the kids to church when they were young, and then we gave up and left them in bed. In the city of constant stimulation, we had failed to give them the opportunity to develop strong inner lives for those occasions when they would find themselves sitting through the second act of The Nutcracker.”

 

“You have to serve those who need to be served, not just the ones who make you feel good about yourself.”

 

“Maeve, speak up. Don’t expect that anyone will do you the favor of listening if you don’t trouble yourself to use your voice.”

 

My Take

I listened to the audio version of The Dutch House and really enjoyed the narration by Tom Hanks.  I have read several books by Ann Patchett (Commonwealth and State of Wonder) and have a lot of respect for her as a writer.  The Dutch House tells a compelling story about a brother and sister and how they cope with some really bad curve balls thrown at them by life.

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418. Honolulu

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:  Alan Brennert

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction

439 pages, published May 24, 2011

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In the book Honolulu, author Alan Brennert tells the story of Jin, a young girl who leaves behind her family in Japanese occupied Korea to journey to Honolulu in 1914 as a picture bride.  We follow Jin’s ups and downs through the decades, from a disastrous first marriage, to living in the red light district, to starting a family and successful business, to finally traveling back to Korea.  Through this character we see the metamorphosis of the Hawaiian islands during the 20th century.

Quotes 

“Hawai’i is not truly the idyllic paradise of popular songs–islands of love and tranquility, where nothing bad ever happens. It was and is a place where people work and struggle, live and die, as they do the world over.”

 

“Quoting an old proverb: “An empty cart rattles loudly.” she said. meaning, One who lacks substance boasts loudest.”

 

“A road need not be paved in gold to find treasures at its end.”

 

“When we are young, we think life will be like a supo: one fabric, one weave, one grand design. But in truth, life turns out to be more like the patchwork cloths-bits and pieces, odds and ends-people, places, things we never expected, never wanted, perhaps.”

 

“Hawai’i has often been called a melting pot, but I think of it more as a ‘mixed plate’—a scoop of rice with gravy, a scoop of macaroni salad, a piece of mahi-mahi, and a side of kimchi. Many different tastes share the plate, but none of them lose their individual flavor, and together they make up a uniquely ‘local’ cuisine. This is also, I believe, what America is at its best—a whole greater than the sum of it’s parts.”

 

“Old Korean adage, “Even jade has flaws.” Or, in other words: Nothing in life is ever perfect.”

 

“Summer in Honolulu brings the sweet smell of mangoes, guava, and passionfruit, ripe for picking; it arbors the streets with the fiery red umbrellas of poincianta trees and decorates the sidewalks with the pink and white puffs of blossoming monkeypods. Cooling trade winds prevail all summer, bringing what the old Hawaiians called makani ‘olu’ ‘olu— “fair wind”.”

 

“She laughed at that, and finally accepted the gift. “Thank you,” she said, bowing, “for your kampana.” This was a Buddhist term that spoke of when “good people’s hearts are moved” to do a compassionate act.

 

“In that panic I convinced myself that this was all my fault; had I not come here under false pretenses, the lie that was my photograph? Did my husband not have the right to be disappointed in me? And I had been callow and stupid to criticize him. I thought of the night a week before when he praised the meal I had cooked and had allowed me to sit and eat with him. He was not a bad man; I was a bad wife. I would have to become a better one, that was all. It was the only way I could walk back into that little bungalow: to embrace the illusion that I could somehow change the situation, that I had some say over it. To admit that I had no say—that was too terrifying to contemplate. And so I sat there on the ground, weaving an illusion from strands of desperation, until at last I got up and started the long walk back to my husband’s house.”

 

“Legend holds that seesaws became popular with girls because on the upswing they were able to catch a glimpse of the world beyond their cloistered walls.”

 

“I liked the fact that the happiest night of my life was followed by a day like any other. It seemed to say that such happiness, so long denied, was now a part of my everyday life.”

 

“Korean clothes, both men’s trousers and women’s skirts, were of one size, with waistbands that could be tightened or loosened as needed. Koreans know that the human body is always changing—so why try to make one’s body fit into some garment of arbitrary size? But Americans seemed quick to bow to the tyranny of a fitted garment—and just as quick to cheat that fit when they could not live up to its restrictions.”

 

My Take

I had previously read Molokai by Alan Brennert and, having enjoyed that story, had high hopes for Honolulu.  I was not disappointed.  Brennert creates characters whom you care about while weaving in historical details.  It was also interesting to read about the evolution of the Hawaiian islands from the perspective of a young Korean woman brought there in the early 20th century as a picture bride.  I also learned a bit about Korean during that same time period when it was occupied by the Japanese.  If you have a trip to Hawaii planned, I encourage you to read this book.

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417. A Town Like Alice

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Noelle Mayne

Author:    Nevil Shute

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction, Foreign

372 pages, published 1950

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

A Town Like Alice follows the story of Jean Paget, a young British woman who spends World War II trying to survive in Malaya as she and a group of women and children are marched around the country by the Japanese.  Back in London after the war, Paget inherits a large sum of money from a distant relative.  She heads back to Malaya to build a well for the village that saved her and then to Australia to search for Joe Harmon, a soldier she met during the war that she mistakenly thought had been killed after stealing chickens for Jean and her fellow refugees.  She eventually finds Joe and helps him build Willstown, a small, desolute town in the Australian outback, into a town like Alice Springs.

Quotes 

“She looked at him in wonder. “Do people think of me like that? I only did what anybody could have done.”  “That’s as it may be,” he replied. “The fact is, that you did it.”

 

“It’s no good going on living in the ashes of a dead happiness.”

 

“it was so beautiful’, he said. ‘the Three Pagodas Pass must be one of the loveliest places in the world. you’ve got this broad valley with the river running down it, and the jungle forest, and the mountains….we used to sit by the river and watch the sun setting behind the mountains, sometimes, and say what a marvelous place it would be to come to for a holiday. However terrible a prison camp may be, it makes a difference if its beautiful.”

 

“You don’t feel any different as you get older. Only, you can’t do so much.”

 

“It was a gambler’s action, but his whole life had probably been made up of gambles; it could hardly be otherwise in the outback.”

 

“Most jobs are interesting when you are learning them,’ I said.”

  

My Take

I really liked this well written, classic book which was first published in 1950.  I appreciated the pluck, common sense and all around goodness of the two main characters, Jean and Joe.  I also really enjoyed seeing how Jean and Joe were able to transform their tiny settlement of Willstown into a burgeoning town by figuring out what the population needed and then methodically providing it.

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413. Daisy Jones & The Six

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Joni Renee

Author:   Taylor Jenkins Reid

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction, Music

355 pages, published March 5, 2019

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Daisy Jones & The Six is a fictional account of a band whose album Aurora came to define the late seventies rock ‘n’ roll era.   Led by the brooding Billy Dunne and headlined by the adventuresome and reckless Daisy, the band briefly have their moment in the sun but come crashing to earth when internal tensions prove to much to overcome.

Quotes 

“I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse.

I am not a muse.

I am the somebody.

End of fucking story.”

 

“I used to think soul mates were two of the same. I used to think I was supposed to look for somebody that was like me. I don’t believe in soul mates anymore and I’m not looking for anything. But if I did believe in them, I’d believe your soul mate was somebody who had all the things you didn’t, that needed all the things you had. Not somebody who’s suffering from the same stuff you are.”

 

“She had written something that felt like I could have written it, except I knew I couldn’t have. I wouldn’t have come up with something like that. Which is what we all want from art, isn’t it? When someone pins down something that feels like it lives inside us? Takes a piece of your heart out and shows it to you? It’s like they are introducing you to a part of yourself.”

 

“Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.”

 

“You have these lines you won’t cross. But then you cross them. And suddenly you possess the very dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won’t instantly come to an end. You’ve taken a big, black, bold line and you’ve made it a little bit gray. And now every time you cross it again, it just gets grayer and grayer until one day you look around and you think, There was a line here once, I think.”

 

“I think you have to have faith in people before they earn it. Otherwise it’s not faith, right?”

 

“You can justify anything. If you’re narcissistic enough to believe that the universe conspires for and against you—which we all are, deep down—then you can convince yourself you’re getting signs about anything and everything.”

 

“Confidence is being okay being bad, not being okay being good.”

 

“But knowing you’re good can only take you so far. At some point, you need someone else to see it, too. Appreciation from people you admire changes how you see yourself.”

 

“But loving somebody isn’t perfection and good times and laughing and making love. Love is forgiveness and patience and faith and every once in a while, it’s a gut punch. That’s why it’s a dangerous thing, when you go loving the wrong person. When you love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. You have to be with someone that deserves your faith and you have to be deserving of someone else’s. It’s sacred.”

 

“Passion is…it’s fire. And fire is great, man. But we’re made of water. Water is how we keep living. Water is what we need to survive.”

 

“You can’t control another person. It doesn’t matter how much you love them. You can’t love someone back to health and you can’t hate someone back to health and no matter how right you are about something, it doesn’t mean they will change their mind.”

 

“Love and pride don’t mix.”

 

“But at some point, you have to recognize that you have no control over anybody and you have to step back and be ready to catch them when they fall and that’s all you can do. It feels like throwing yourself to sea. Or, maybe not that. Maybe it’s more like throwing someone you love out to sea and then praying they float on their own, knowing they might well drown and you’ll have to watch.”

 

“I believe you can break me

But I’m saved for the one who saved me

We only look like young stars

Because you can’t see old scars”

 

“It is what I have always loved about music. Not the sounds or the crowds or the good times as much as the words — the emotions, the stories, the truth — that you can let flow right out of your mouth.

 

“I wish someone had told me that love isn’t torture. Because I thought love was this thing that was supposed to tear you in two and leave you heartbroken and make your heart race in the worst way. I thought love was bombs and tears and blood. I did not know that it was supposed to make you lighter, not heavier. I didn’t know it was supposed to take only the kind of work that makes you softer. I thought love was war. I didn’t know it was supposed to… I didn’t know it was supposed to be peace.”

 

“It’s funny. At first, I think you start getting high to dull your emotions, to escape from them. But after a while you realize that the drugs are what are making your life untenable, they are actually what are heightening every emotion you have. It’s making your heartbreak harder, your good times higher. So coming down really does start to feel like rediscovering sanity. And when you rediscover your sanity, it’s only a matter of time before you start to get an inkling of why you wanted to escape it in the first place.”

 

“It scared me that the only thing between this moment of calm and the biggest tragedy of my life was me choosing not to do it.”

 

“I’m not perfect. I’ll never be perfect. I don’t expect anything to be perfect. But things don’t have to be perfect to be strong. So if you’re waiting around, hoping that something’s going to crack, I just… I have to tell you it’s not gonna be me. And I can’t let it be Billy. Which means it’s gonna be you.”

 

“When people asked me for my autograph, I used to write, “Stay Solid, Daisy J.” But when it was a young girl – which wasn’t often but it did happen from time to time – I used to write, “Dream big, little bird. Love, Daisy”

 

“If I’ve given the impression that trust is easy – with your spouse, with your kids, with anybody you care about – if I’ve made it seem like it’s easy to do….then I’ve misspoken. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But you have nothing without it. Nothing meaningful at all. That’s why I chose to do it. Over and over and over. Even when it bit me in the ass. And I will keep choosing it until the day I die”

 

My Take

I really enjoyed Daisy Jones & The Six, especially the audio version which has multiple narrators who do a terrific job bringing this story of a 70’s rock band to vibrant life.  Listening to it, I really felt like I was there as the band went on a wild ride that burned bright but ultimately led to their dissolution.  The book also has a lot of interesting things to say about love, trust, soul mates and the creative process.  Highly recommended.

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405. At the Water’s Edge

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Joni Renee

Author:    Sara Gruen

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance, Foreign, World War II

348 pages, published March 31, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

At the Water’s Edge tells the story of Maddie Hyde, a young ingénue who has entered into a disastrous marriage with Ellis Hyde (who may be gay), a high society Philadelphia playboy.  On New Year’s Eve of 1942, Ellis is cut off financially by his father, a former army Colonel who is already embarrassed by his son’s inability to serve in WWII due to colorblindness.  To redeem himself, Ellis embarks on a quest to find the Loch Ness monster, a venture his father had attempted but failed at in a very public manner.  While in Scotland during the war, the Hyde’s marriage begins to fall apart as Maddie discovers there is greater meaning in her life than being a socialite.

Quotes 

“I paused beneath the arched entrance, where the drawbridge had once been, imagining all the people who had passed in and out over the centuries, every one of them carrying a combination of desire, hope, jealousy, despair, grief, love, and every other human emotion; a combination that made each one as unique as a snowflake, yet linked all of them inextricably to every other human being from the dawn of time to the end of it.”

 

“One Crow for sorrow, Two Crows for mirth, Three Crows for a wedding, Four Crows for a birth, Five Crows for silver, Six Crows for gold, Seven for a secret, never to be told.”

 

“The monster—if there was one—never revealed itself to me again. But what I had learned over the past year was that monsters abound, usually in plain sight.”

 

“Life. There it was. In all its beautiful, tragic fragility, there was still life, and those of us who’d been lucky enough to survive opened our arms wide and embraced it.”

 

“It seems there’s nothing so good or pure it can’t be taken without a moment’s notice. And then in the end, it all gets taken anyway.”

 

“It was full of luxurious trappings and shiny baubles, and that had blinded me to the fact that nothing about it was real.”

 

“I did not take enough care with my hair, but a permanent wave would fix that. I was not thin enough, but for that, alas, there was no quick fix. I should never put more than the equivalent of three peas on my fork at a time, or one small disk of carrot. I should always leave two thirds of my meal on my plate, and was never to eat in public.”

 

My Take

I had previously read Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and really enjoyed it.  At the Water’s Edge is a lesser book with a bit too much romantic melodrama and characters who could use a bit more development.  Still, it was a decent read.

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386. The Maze at Windermere

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Terra McKinnish

Author:   Gregory Blake Smith

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction

580 pages, published July 11, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Like its title, The Maze at Windermere takes the reader on a maze like journey through multiple time periods in the same area of Newport, Rhode Island.  We follow the romantic entanglements of couples through the ages, starting in the present day and going back to the 1600’s.

Quotes 

“What interests me,” she took up finally, and there was now no touch of her characteristic satire, “is a life in which I am engaged in discovering what interests me. Not just now, as a young woman, but when I am a wife, and when I have children, and beyond. A life of imagination, and experience, and engagement, and commitment to something beyond myself.”

 

“But I feel myself marooned on the island of myself.”

 

“One must take care that one’s life does not begin to resemble the plot of a novel.”

 

“Ah, to be able to read both the surface and that which is below the surface!”

 

My Take

While it started out a bit slowly, around the halfway point I started to really enjoy The Maze at Windermere.  Smith is a talented writer and presents some compelling insights into the human condition and the motivations which drive us.  Interestingly, I found myself most captivated by the oldest story from the 1600’s and the most recent one from 2011.

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379. There There

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Lisa Goldberg

Author:  Tommy Orange

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction

294 pages, published June 5, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

There There is a story of twelve characters, all of whom are traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life back together after his uncle’s death and has come to work at the powwow to honor his uncle’s memory. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil, who has taught himself traditional Indian dance through YouTube videos and has come to the powwow to dance in public for the very first time.

Quotes 

“If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name. Follow it back and you might find your line paved with gold, or beset with traps.”

 

“The spider’s web is a home and a trap.”

 

“This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that’s how you know you’re on board the ship that serves hors d’oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who’ve never even heard of the words hors d’oeuvres or fluff.”

 

“She told me the world was made of stories, nothing else, just stories, and stories about stories.”

 

“Kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. And we think the problem is that they’re jumping. This is what we’ve done: We’ve tried to find ways to get them to stop jumping. Convince them that burning alive is better than leaving when the shit gets too hot for them to take. We’ve boarded up windows and made better nets to catch them, found more convincing ways to tell them not to jump. They’re making the decision that it’s better to be dead and gone than to be alive in what we have here, this life, the one we made for them, the one they’ve inherited.”

 

“That’s what she loves about Motown, the way it asks you to carry sadness and heartbreak but dance while doing so.”

 

“The wound that was made when white people came and took all that they took has never healed. An unattended wound gets infected. Becomes a new kind of wound like the history of what actually happened became a new kind history. All these stories that we haven’t been telling all this time, that we haven’t been listening to, are just part of what we need to heal. Not that we’re broken. And don’t make the mistake of calling us resilient. To not have been destroyed, to not have given up, to have survived, is no badge of honor. Would you call an attempted murder victim resilient?”

 

“The problem with believing is you have to believe that believing will work, you have to believe in belief.”

 

“We’ve been defined by everyone else and continue to be slandered despite easy-to-look-up-on-the-internet facts about the realities of our histories and current state as a people. We have the sad, defeated Indian silhouette, and the heads rolling down temple stairs, we have it in our heads, Kevin Costner saving us, John Wayne’s six-shooter slaying us, an Italian guy named Iron Eyes Cody playing our parts in movies. We have the litter-mourning, tear-ridden Indian in the commercial (also Iron Eyes Cody), and the sink-tossing, crazy Indian who was the narrator in the novel, the voice of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. We have all the logos and mascots. The copy of a copy of the image of an Indian in a textbook. All the way from the top of Canada, the top of Alaska, down to the bottom of South America, Indians were removed, then reduced to a feathered image. Our heads are on flags, jerseys, and coins. Our heads were on the penny first, of course, the Indian cent, and then on the buffalo nickel, both before we could even vote as a people—which, like the truth of what happened in history all over the world, and like all that spilled blood from slaughter, are now out of circulation.”

 

My Take

While generally well written with a few interesting characters, There There is such a downbeat tale of victimology that I was happy to finally be finished with it.  It reminded me a lot of You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie (author of the highly recommended The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian).  I get that Native Americans have had a raw deal in this country and feel betrayed.  It is  just a downer to read these tales of woe.

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375. Where the Crawdads Sing

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Pam Dupont

Author:   Delia Owens

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

384 pages, published August 14, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Where the Crawdads Sing tells the story of Kya Clark who was abandoned by her parents in the early 1960’s and left to fend for herself in the backwaters of Barkley Cove, a small town on the North Carolina coast.  Known to locals as the mysterious “Marsh Girl,” Kya teaches herself to read and channels her love of nature into a rare expertise for the tidewater flora and fauna.  When Chase Andrews is found dead in 1969, Kya is immediately suspected and put on trial.

Quotes 

“I wasn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.”

 

“She knew the years of isolation had altered her behavior until she was different from others, but it wasn’t her fault she’d been alone. Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.”

 

“She could read anything now, he said, and once you can read anything you can learn everything. It was up to her. “Nobody’s come close to filling their brains,” he said. “We’re all like giraffes not using their necks to reach the higher leaves.”

 

“His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.”

 

“lot of times love doesn’t work out. Yet even when it fails, it connects you to others and, in the end, that is all you have, the connections.”

 

“How much do you trade to defeat loneliness?”

 

“Time ensures children never know their parents young.”

 

“Autumn leaves don’t fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.”

 

My Take

I liked, but did not love, Where the Crawdads Sing.  I typically am a big fan of books where the main character overcomes a big hurdle by relying on themselves and others to learn what they are capable of.  This book has that in spades along with some well done courtroom scenes.  However, it was a bit too formulaic with an unearned, twist ending that keeps me from rating it higher.

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