The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

This book was my book club book for this month. After having missed the last two meetings due to various reasons, I was determined that I would make it this month. Maybe I should have been more determined to actually finish the book on time. I ended up finishing it one day late, but I did finish it. Believe me, that was an achievement in itself for this book!

From that last sentence, you may correctly surmise that I didn't really like this book. To be honest, when it was announced right back at the beginning of the year, I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to like it and so it proved. Maybe I talked myself into it, but if I did that conversation started several years ago.

The feeling that I would not like this book actually goes back to when I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by her husband, Jonathan Safran Foer, more than six years ago. Tonight as I wrote this post, I went back and read my review of that book and read that I thought it would be interesting to compare that book with this book. Maybe I should have left it a few more years.

If you ask me though to quantify exactly what it was that didn't work for me, I would struggle to say that there was any one thing. There are multiple narrators, some more reliable than others, and each of them had something about them that I found frustrating. The main male character was Leo Gursky, a Jew who survived the Holocaust and found his way to America as a young man. He was also the author of the book The History of Love which plays a crucial role in this book. He wrote it to share with love of his life, Alma. She managed to get to America long before he did and, thinking he was dead, moved on with her life. Leo entrusted his manuscript to his friend who took it with him to South America. As an example of the kinds of things which shouldn't have annoyed me while I was reading but really did, when Leo was the narrator there were strange uses of the words But and And Yet. In both cases those little words would be used as whole sentences! Drove me crazy.

The other main character is Alma, a fourteen year old girl who was named after the main character in Leo's book. Her father had found a copy of the book and now, years after his death, Alma's mother is translating it from Spanish into English. Alma lives in New York with her mother and her younger brother Bird, who thinks he may well be a messiah. Alma embarks on a search to find out more about the author, and then later on to find more about the person who was the original Alma. In some ways, this novel also tells of her coming of age within the context of her family life and her searches.

Alma's chapters were predominantly written in lists which is an interesting technique to use, but there were times when I wanted more. I thought her family dynamics with a mother who doesn't seem to have moved on from the death of her husband, and the younger brother who struggles with basic socialisation skills was very interesting.

There are a couple of other narrators and there were times when I was very glad that at the beginning of each new narrative there was a symbol so we knew exactly who it was that was now telling the story. With the narrative moving backwards and forwards in time and place, I definitely had to work a bit harder than I normally like to keep up with the story developments.

All of that sounds quite negative but I don't doubt that Krauss is a very talented author, just not an author for me. There were scenes which had moved me quite a lot. For example, at the very beginning of the book when we first meet Leo his major concern is about being invisible and so when he leaves his apartment which is full of stuff he goes places and makes sure that he is seen. As an example on the first page he says "I try to make a point of being seen. I'll buy a juice even though I'm not thirsty. If the store is crowded I'll even go so far as dropping my change all over the floor, the nickels and dimes skidding in every direction. I'll get down on my knees. It's a big effort for me to get down on my knees, and even bigger effort to get up. And yet."

Yep, there's one of those "And yet."

Turns out I have quite a bit more to say about this book than I thought I would have. When I started this post, it was with the intention of making it a Bookish Quote post, where I share a quote about books or reading or libraries or anything like that and not much more!

The first section I chose comes from page 70. Please note that I have removed one word as that is kind of a spoiler for the events in the book.

Of the two thousand original copies printed of The History of Love, some were bought and read, many were bought and not read, some were given as gifts, some sat fading in bookstore windows serving as landing docks for flies, some were marked up with pencil, and a good many were sent to the paper compactor, where they were shredded to a pulp along with other unread or unwanted books, their sentences parsed and minced at the machine's spinning blades. Staring out the window, ......... imagined the two thousand copies of The History of Love as a flock of two thousand homing pigeons that could flap their wings and return to him to report on how many tears shed, how many laughs, how many passages read aloud, how many cruel closings of the cover after reading barely a page, how many never opened at all.

There is then a section where it is explained how one copy of the book ends up in a shop window, and then from page 74:

The next morning, the first rays of the rising sun fell across the cover of The History of Love. the first of many flies alighted on its jacket. Its mildewed pages began to dry out in the heat as the blue-gray Persian cat who lorded over the shop brushed past it to lay claim to a pool of sunlight. A few hours later, the first of many passerby gave it a cursory glance.

The shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed, or worse, go unread. Instead she let it set where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it.

The next book club book has been chosen and this time it is a short story collection that I have read before so I don't expect to struggle quite as much as I did with this one!

Rating 2.5/5

Synopsis

Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbour know he's still alive, drawing attention to himself at the milk counter of Starbucks. But life wasn't always life this: sixty years ago, in the Polish village where he was born, Leo fell in love and wrote a book. and although he doesn't know it, that book also survived: it crossed oceans and generations, and changed lives.

Fourteen-year-old Alma was named after a character in that book. These days she has he hands full keeping track of her little brother Bird (who thinks he might be the Messiah) and taking copious notes in her book, How to Survive in the Wild, Volume Three. But when a mysterious letter arrives in the post she undertakes and adventure to find her namesake, and save her family.

In her extraordinary new novel Nicole Krauss has created some of the most memorably and moving characters in recent fiction. A tale brimming with laughter, passion and soaring imaginative power, The History of Love confirms Nicole Krauss as one of the most remarkable writers of her generation.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (includes international giveaway)

Dr Marina Singh was studying to be a doctor. After a terrible incident, she gives up that course of study and instead becomes a pharmacologist, studying cholesterol. She works for a drug company, is involved in an secret affair but other than that we don't know a lot about her. If I was to use one word only to describe her I would say that she was repressed.

She normally works closely with her lab mate, Dr Anders Eckman, but months ago he had been sent to the jungles of the Amazon to try and track down the woman who was previously Marina's lecturer, Dr Annick Swenson. Dr Swenson is in the Amazon working on developing a lucrative new medication but she is something of a maverick. She won't respond to requests for updates on where she is up to with her research and so the company have sent Dr Eckman to find out exactly how her research is going and more importantly when this drug will be ready for testing.

When they receive notification that Dr Eckman has died and been buried in Brazil, his widow wants to know more about the circumstances. Her employer still wants to know about the research project and so Marina is sent south to find out more..

In terms of setting, there are three distinct sections in this book. The first part of the book is set in Minnesota and in this world Marina is very controlled in almost every way. The first stop on her journey to the Amazon is Manaus in Brazil where she spends several weeks whilst she waits for the appearance of the mysterious Dr Swenson. Whilst there she spends time with an Australian couple, the Bovenders, who run interference for Dr Swenson, trying to stop anyone from finding where she is, what she is doing and from generally disturbing her in any way. Finally, she makes it to the research station in the jungle on the banks of a tributary of the Amazon where there are many surprises in store.

Whilst Marina undertakes a physical journey, it is more the philosophical and emotional journey that forms the core of this book. She loses her luggage more than once, and each time she becomes less reliant on her westernness and in effect ends up stripped back to her bare soul.

The research that is being undertaken is perceived  to be leading to a wonder infertility drug. The women of the tribe are able to sustain healthy pregnancies well into their seventies, but there is more happening at the station than just that research and the scientists working there are doing their best to keep the other research secret until the time is right. There is discussion of the moral and ethical responsibilities related to medical research and about bringing Western ways to the remote tribes but I never found those elements to be too dry or inaccessible.

I don't want to say too much more because part of the beauty of this book is watching the story unfold.

What a surprise this book was! I had only listened to one Ann Patchett book previously (Bel Canto) and I really didn't like it. I am not sure if it would have been different if I had of actually read the book, but I thought it was slow and a bit pointless.

So why did I volunteer for this book tour then? When this book first came out, I heard Ann Patchett on several podcasts that I listen to and each time I heard her I became more and more interested in the book. Then she was one of the big name guests to appear at last year's Melbourne Writer's Festival and I went to hear her talk. She is so good in a crowded room - funny and charming, engaging and passionate about writing and books.  It was a case where despite not liking the only book I had read from the author, I liked the author and so I was prepared to give her another go. I am so glad that I did.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it much more of a page turner than I was expecting it to be. The topics discussed were interesting without feeling overwhelmed with the scientific details. There was adventure and drama - a particularly gruesome scene with a snake had my heart racing - and whilst a lot of the characters were not people I would particularly like if I met them, there is a young deaf boy named Easter who has made his home in a little corner of my heart. I enjoyed reading the way the author bought a group of individuals together to form a small community in an isolated place.

If there is a weakness in the book, it was the ending which didn't totally work for me, and I know that there are lots of other reviews out there which talk about the ending being a let down and this was one of the big issues I had when I listened to Bel Canto. I enjoyed the journey so much though, that I can live with the ending, mainly because I am not sure how else the story could have been all wrapped up. We are left not knowing where Marina goes next in her life, but that is okay because I was left feeling that she knew a lot more about herself at the end of the book than she did in the beginning.

I was so pleasantly surprised by how much of a page turner I found this book. Am I brave enough to try other Ann Patchett books? Maybe in due course, but for the time being I want to savour this reading experience.

4.5/5

Synopsis

In a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, scientific miracles, and spiritual transformations, State of Wonder presents a world of stunning surprise and danger, rich in emotional resonance and moral complexity.

As Dr. Marina Singh embarks upon an uncertain odyssey into the insect-infested Amazon, she will be forced to surrender herself to the lush but forbidding world that awaits within the jungle. Charged with finding her former mentor Dr. Annick Swenson, a researcher who has disappeared while working on a valuable new drug, she will have to confront her own memories of tragedy and sacrifice as she journeys into the unforgiving heart of darkness. Stirring and luminous, State of Wonder is a world unto itself, where unlikely beauty stands beside unimaginable loss beneath the rain forest’s jeweled canopy.

Tour and giveaway details

See what other participants on this blog tour thought of this book by following the tour

Tour schedule 
Ann Patchett's website 

I am very excited to offer up a in international giveaway of the paperback of this book! To enter, leave a comment including your email address.

Giveaway closes 28 May 2012

The Personal History of Rachel DuPree by Ann Weisgarber

I

When Rachel, hired help in a Chicago boardinghouse, falls in love with Isaac, the boardinghouse owner's son, he makes her a bargain: he'll marry her, but only if she gives up her 160 acres from the Homestead Act so he can double his share. She agrees, and together they stake their claim in the forebodingly beautiful South Dakota Badlands.

Fourteen years later, in the summer of 1917, the cattle are bellowing with thirst. It hasn't rained in months, and supplies have dwindled. Pregnant, and struggling to feed her family, Rachel is isolated by more than just geography. She is determined to give her surviving children the life they deserve, but she knows that her husband, a fiercely proud former Buffalo Soldier, will never leave his ranch: black families are rare in the West, and land means a measure of equality with the white man. Somehow Rachel must find the strength to do what is right-for herself, and for her children.

Reminiscent of The Color Purple as well as the frontier novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Willa Cather, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree opens a window on the little-known history of African American homesteaders and gives voice to an extraordinary heroine who embodies the spirit that built America.

Recently, I was asked the question 'Why do you read historical fiction?' I think my answer was something along the lines of being able to eavesdrop on history. Really, the answer could have been to read books like this to find out about little known facts from history. My knowledge of homesteaders in America is very limited and I certainly hadn't given any thought to the fact that there were African-American homesteaders,or to the life that they and their families would have lived.

Rachel and Isaac DuPree are living in the Badlands of South Dakota,  a land that is beautiful but also harsh at the best of times but is especially harsh during a long drought. The novel opens with a disturbing episode as one of the smaller children, Liz, is sent down the well to scoop out what little water remains at the bottom because the bucket can't be used in such a small amount of water as the well is practically dry.

Rachel tells us of her life in the Badlands but also flashes back to episodes from her past, especially back to when she was working in the Chicago boarding house owned by Mrs DuPree. When Mrs DuPree's son Isaac returns on leave from his duties as a buffalo soldier, she has grand ideas of marrying him off to a nice young lady from an acceptable section of society. She certainly doesn't want him marrying the help, but that is exactly what happens when Rachel agrees to join the parcel of land that she is entitled to under the Homestead Act to that which Isaac has already claimed, thus doubling his land size. They initially agreed to a limited time marriage, but they are still together, working hard to maintain their constantly expanding land holdings and their expanding family.

Rachel is in the latter stages of pregnancy when we meet her, and already has several young children, but this life that she has chosen with Isaac was not an easy one and she has also lost two children. She is however proud of the life that she has built with Isaac, having started with nothing, then living in a sod dugout until finally she is living in a wood house that they built themselves. That begins to change however when she begins to questions Isaac's priorities.

I loved reading about Rachel. She was strong enough to make the decisions that need to be made, both for herself and her children. It took her a while, but she got there in the end.

The character that has me thinking the most though is Isaac. I can't quite decide if he is such a driven man that he can think of nothing but acquiring and holding on to land, or if he is just a guy who doesn't easily show or communicate his emotions. He is hard on all of his family but I don't think he is blind to them and just making them do things that they won't like just for his own selfish ends. For example, with sending a terrified Liz down the well, the fact of the matter was that without doing this there would be absolutely no water for his family and they would all die of thirst.

In his mind, he thinks he is doing the right thing by contemplating going off to work in the mines to bring in a steady income and leaving Rachel to cope despite the fact she is telling him quite plainly that she won't be able too. It is obvious though that he is capable of physical affection with Rachel which he shows just by the touch of his hand on her back when she needs it. He does have feelings about his children, evidenced by the tears he sheds at one of the key moments in the book.

Isaac is particularly rigid when it comes to the rules in his own house. He seems to me to be very much of a generation where the father in the house must be obeyed by everyone, including his wife. Some of his rules make sense, but we did get to see more emphasis on the idea of persecution of a minority group with his own refusal to allow agency Indians into his home, or even to meet his own responsibilities in relation to certain Indians who make their way to him. He is discriminated against by certain towns people but he in turn is intolerant of others who he sees as beneath him for whatever reason.

I didn't actually realise for a few chapters that the characters in the book were African-American, and for me, that can be seen as quite a good thing. Whilst a big part of the subject matter of the book is both the isolation that Rachel felt not only living in the middle nowhere with few neighbours, but even more isolating is the fact that there are no other African-American people living anywhere near her. At it's heart though The Personal History of Rachel DuPree is a human story - a woman who is struggling to get by in a difficult situation and making the difficult but necessary choices to get the best outcome for both herself and her children. A story of endurance, of courage and of knowing when it is time to make changes.

A couple of years ago I was visiting Perth and I spent some time listening to the stories that my grandfather told about some of the jobs he has done over the years. One of his earliest jobs was clearing areas of land in some of the hilly areas nearby. He had a horse and cart, and himself, and that was it. In another example is having to walk from one town to the next in the country areas of Western Australia in order to get to the next job, and these towns were not close together. All of his work as a farmer and a shearer was hard and it was physical, and is really pretty foreign to the kind of work that his grandchildren get to do. I found myself thinking of his stories as I read this book, mainly because of the sheer physicality of their day to day lives! I suspect that I would be a bit too soft from modern city living to live this kind of life.

When I think of pioneers and homesteaders in Australian terms I think that we are talking more than 150 years ago, and yet this book is very much talking about life in the wilderness, about making a life for yourself in the isolated rural region of the Badlands of South Dakota in America. 100 years ago was a long time ago, but by that time in the cities there was electricity, there was running water, there were cars on the street. It was therefore something of a shock to me to realise that timewise, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree was in my grandfather's lifetime! In 1917, he would have been 8 or 9 years old. Giving it some kind of context makes it feel as though it happened very recently indeed.

This is a book that I would highly recommend to anyone who loves to read about times gone by. I am sure that you will cheer for Rachel, just as I did.

Rating 4.5

I am reviewing this book today as part of the TLC Book tours blog tour, although I obtained the book from my local library. To see other stops on the tour click on the following links.

Tuesday, November 1st:  nomadreader
Wednesday, November 2nd:  Peeking Between the Pages  
Thursday, November 3rd:  Linus’s Blanket - author Q&A
Monday, November 7th:  A Bookish Libraria
Tuesday, November 8th:  Man of La Book
Thursday, November 10th:  Unabridged Chick
Monday, November 14th:  Book Dilettante
Tuesday, November 15th:  Book Chatter
Wednesday, November 16th:  She is Too Fond of Books- Spotlight on Bookstores guest post
Thursday, November 17th:  Book Club Classics
Monday, November 21st:  Raging Bibliomania
Tuesday, November 22nd:  The Brain Lair
Wednesday, November 23rd:  Historical Tapestry – author guest post, “Why I Love Book Groups”
Wednesday, November 23rd:  Broken Teepee
Friday, November 25th:  Historical Tapestry
Monday, November 28th:  A Bookworm’s World
Tuesday, November 29th:  My Bookshelf
Wednesday, November 30th:  Elle Lit.
Thursday, December 1st:  Melody & Words
Monday, December 5th:  Book Snob
Wednesday, December 7th:  Life in Review
Thursday, December 8th:  The 3 R’s Blog

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan's spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.

We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist's couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to aver the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city's demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own whilst starting at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nationale. We meed Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life - divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house - and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco's punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang - who thrived and faltered - and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie's catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou's far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertone of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption, and the universal tendency to reach for both - and escape the merciless progress of time - in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating  work from one of our boldest writers.

With inside cover copy like that, and the fact that this is the book that won the Pulitzer prize and others, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize as well, who needs a review!

When I look back on this book in a couple of years time I think the thing that will still be strong in my memory is the structure of the book - if you could call it structure as such. It isn't a novel as much as it is an interlocking collection of short stories. This isn't a book that goes from point A to point B. It probably starts at point G and eventually gets to point Z with side trips past point A and B.

In my own mind I was trying to think of a comparison to show how this book works and the closest I could come up with was one of those puzzles we used to have as kids where there was a mixed up picture in a square and there was one piece missing so you had to move all the pieces around until the picture was formed. At first you would get occasional glimpses of what the jumbled image was going to look like, but then you would have to break the picture up to make another piece of the puzzle fit. Eventually though, the last piece slides into place and you see the whole image.

Another analogy might be a really long conversation with a very good friend, where you jump topics with ease, reminiscing about the past, talking about the future, and sharing a joke. Never a linear conversation but rather one that starts at one point, and then ends up somewhere completely different and you find yourself wondering how you got there!

Another aspect of structure that was very different in this book is that Egan experiments with all different forms of storytelling. There are chapters written in the form of a magazine column, another in Powerpoint as well as different tenses and points of view.  I think the Powerpoint chapter was amazing! The language was sparse, the story barely there on the page, but the concepts and the narrative were still strong enough to be clear for the reader, and I loved that we got to see Sasha's future life.

After looking at the structure, how about the characters. I can't say that I particularly related to the characters that we met in the pages of the book, but such is Egan's skill that you actually didn't need to. Our two main characters are Sasha and Bennie. Sasha is on a date with Alex when her habit of stealing things, anything, causes her to steal a wallet whilst in the bathroom. As she analyses why she steals with her shrink, Alex crosses one of her boundaries without even knowing it. We meet Sasha again as a young woman struggling to make ends meet living as a runaway in Naples, and then through the eyes of her best friend Rob who has plenty of demons of his own.

In the next chapter we meet Bennie, who is Alex's boss. He is a divorced man who is struggling to relate to his 9 year old son. One way that he can occasionally connect is through music, but even that is problematical. Through the book we see Benny with his ex wife in happier times, then we meet him as a youth revelling in the punk rock scene with his friends. We meet his mentor Lou and his very young girlfriend and her friend.

The links as we move from chapter to chapter are at times tenuous, but they are all there for a reason. Along the way, Egan makes comment about some important issues. Not only the power of music to transcend time, but also for example the power of media when a washed up PR person is employed to try and rehabilitate the image of an African dictator.

Another chapter that I really liked, not because it was enjoyable but because of the food for thought it provided, was the final chapter. It is set in New York in the not too distant future and Egan has taken our current obsession with social media and expanded it to the nth degree to come up with a quite scary world where even the youngest child has exposure to the media in a way that is similar to our own world but amplified many times over. A washed up musician is being bought back for a live concert and one of our characters is being asked to find some parrots - people who can spread the word, hype up the event to make it a success, to make it the kind of event that everyone who is anyone will claim to have been at even if they really aren't. In a way it kind of reminded me of a discussion of the difference between buzz and hype and how one, or the other, is generated, whether it is organic or whether there is someone in the background pulling the strings to manipulate the public.

This is the second Egan book I have read and liked. A few years ago now I read The Keep which was a kind of modern, gothicky ghost story. I am not sure why I haven't bothered to go and track down her other books. I will definitely be watching to see what the author comes up with next as she doesn't seem to be afraid to take risks in her writing and to take her readers on the journey with her!

Rating 4/5

The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison

England, 31st August 1939: The world is on the brink of war. As Hitler prepares to invade Poland, thousands of children are evacuated from London to escape the impending Blitz. Torn from her mother, eight-year-old Anna Sands is relocated with other children to a large Yorkshire estate which has been opened up to evacuees by Thomas and Elizabeth Ashton, an enigmatic, childless couple. Soon Anna gets drawn into their unraveling relationship, seeing things that are not meant for her eyes and finding herself part-witness and part-accomplice to a love affair with unforeseen consequences. A story of longing, loss, and complicated loyalties, combining a sweeping narrative with subtle psychological observation, The Very Thought of You is not just a love story but a story about love.

Sometimes you hear about a book and you think to yourself "I know that I am going to love this book" and then when you come to write the review it gives you great satisfaction to be able to say that you were right. And then there are the other books - those ones that sound like exactly the kind of book you are going to love...and you just don't.

The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison is unfortunately one of the latter types for me. In theory this is a perfect book for me. I love reading stories set against the background of war, particularly World War II, and whilst I have read about a young person going to stay with a family as an evacuee earlier this year, this is the first time I have read that experience through the eyes of an evacuee who goes to a stately home turned school. The historical setting and the location sound fascinating.

The story starts with 8 year old Anna Sands. She is about to be evacuated to the countryside like thousands of other children were just after the outbreak of World War II but before the bombs actually started to fall on the major cities. After sharing a magical day out with her mother in preparation for their separation, Anna is looking forward to going to the seaside but instead ends up at a stately home in Yorkshire with lots of other children, where the house has been hastily converted into a school. Anna is somewhat remote from the other children emotionally, but feels a connection to Thomas Ashton almost immediately. Thomas worked for the diplomatic corps until he was left wheelchair bound after a bout of polio and is now running the school and doubling up as a teacher for some of the time.

Thomas and Elizabeth are desperate for children, and when I say desperate, I mean desperate, particularly in Elizabeth's case. There is some hope that by opening their home up to become a school they will in some way compensate for their barrenness but it is at best a band aid solution. As a character, Elizabeth suffers from being very two dimensional - the bitter woman who descends to a very dark place. She is not the only two dimensional character who fills the pages by any stretch of the imagination, but she certainly is the most obvious example of this.

Even the secondary characters seem to be caricatures of real people. For example, whilst Anna is pining away in the school in Yorkshire, her mother Roberta is living the high life in London barely giving her young child a thought.

Of the things that bothered me about this book, one of the bigger issues include the fact that the author didn't seem to know what the focus of the novel was. Was it meant to be a story about the evacuee experience of a young girl? Was it meant to be a dissection of a marriage from the point where Elizabeth decided that Thomas was the man for her and made it happen, through his illness and subsequent disability, and then their inability to have children? Was it meant to be the story of the descent of the physical house from family home to empty National Trust property? All of the above? Having finished the book, I can't say that I am sure.

That's not to say that Alison can't turn a phrase, because she most certainly can, and there were sections where I stopped and reread passages because the observations were so strong. For example, from page 82:

It was no comfort to her that William had been heroic, because the soaring death toll had already devalued the worth of any one sacrifice  

and then again from page 105

Sometimes, across the dining room she would glimpse Thomas talking to someone, and her heart would turn over at the sight of his smile. And a memory would come back to her of the longing she had known for him before their marriage. But she knew that now it was only a memory of a feeling, not the feeling itself. 

The couple of lines of the publisher's blurb say that "The Very Thought of You is not just a love story but is a story about love", but I would argue that it is neither of those things, or at least it is not the kind of love that I want to read about or live. Why would anyone want to love if it left everyone unfulfilled for the rest of their days? I guess this kind of ties in with the idea that all the characters in "literature" need to be miserable in order to be worth reading about. I don't get why that needs to be the case, but it is certainly not something that has gone unnoticed when it comes to discussion about the various literature prizes over the years.

Thanks to Galleygrab for giving me the opportunity to read this book! I am glad to be able to say that I finally read (or more precisely reviewed) something for my ongoing Orange Prize Project which I have been neglecting for a long time now. This book was shortlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize. It also counts towards the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Rating: 3/5

Cross posted at Historical Tapestry

Another long term challenge

I am joining in on The Orange Prize Project. The blurb from the site is:

This reading challenge is a long-term project in which the participants will read all books that have won or been short listed for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction AND the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers. There is no time limit.

In case anyone doesn't know what The Orange Prize is:

The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction is awarded to women of any nationality who have written the best, eligible full-length novel in English. Eligible works must have been published for the first time in the United Kingdom between 1 April of the year before the prize is awarded and 31 March of the year in which the prize is awarded.

Translations of books originally written in other languages are not eligible for the prize.

So here's the list of shortlisted titles since The Orange Prize began. I have highlighted the seven books that I have read (in orange of course!)


2007

Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - WINNER
Arlington Park, by Rachel Cusk
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, by Xiaolu Guo
The Observations, by Jane Harris
Digging to America, by Anne Tyler

2006

On Beauty, by Zadie Smith - WINNER
The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss
Beyond Black, by Hilary Mantel
The Accidental, by Ali Smith
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living, by Carrie Tiffany
The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters

2005

We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver - WINNER
Old Filth, by Jane Gardam
The Mammoth Cheese, by Sheri Holman
Liars and Saints, by Maile Meloy
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, by Marina Lewycka

2004

Small Island, by Andrea Levy - WINNER
Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard
Purple Hibiscus, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Ice Road, by Gillian Slovo
The Colour, by Rose Tremain

2003

Property, by Valerie Martin - WINNER
Buddha Da, by Anne Donovan
Heligoland, by Shena Mackay
Unless, by Carol Shields
The Autograph Man, by Zadie Smith
The Little Friend, by Donna Tartt

2002

Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett- WINNER
No Bones, by Anna Burns
The Siege, by Helen Dunmore
The White Family, by Maggie Gee
A Child's Book of True Crime, by Chloe Hooper
Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters

2001

The Idea of Perfection, by Kate Grenville - WINNER
The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood
Fred & Edie, by Jill Dawson
Hotel World, by Ali Smith
Homestead, by Rosina Lippi
Horse Heaven, by Jane Smiley

2000

When I Lived in Modern Times, by Linda Grant - WINNER
If I Told You Once, by Judy Budnitz
Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout
The Dancers Dancing, by Eilis Ni Dhuibhne
White Teeth, by Zadie Smith

1999

A Crime in the Neighborhood, by Suzanne Berne - WINNER
The Short History of a Prince, by Jane Hamilton
The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
Paradise, by Toni Morrison
The Leper's Companions, by Julia Blackburn
Visible Worlds, by Marilyn Bowering

1998

Larry's Party, by Carol Shield - WINNER
Lives of the Monster Dogs, by Kirsten Bakis
The Ventriloquist's Tale, by Pauline Melville
The Magician's Assistant, by Ann Patchett
Love Like Hate Adore, by Deirdre Purcell
The Weight of Water, by Anita Shreve

1997

Fugitive Pieces, by Anne Michaels - WINNER
Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood
One by One in the Darkness, by Deirdre Madden
Accordion Crimes, by E. Annie Proulx
Hen's Teeth, by Manda Scott
I Was Amelia Earhart, by Jane Mendelsohn

1996

A Spell of Winter, by Helen Dunmore - WINNER
The Book of Colour, by Julia Blackburn
Spinsters, by Pagan Kennedy
The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan
Ladder of Years, by Anne Tyler
Eveless Eden, by Marianne Wiggins


I haven't read any of the books that have been nominated for the The Orange Broadband Award for New Writers. The eligibility rules are as follows:

The Orange Broadband Award for New Writers is open to all first works of fiction written by women of any age or nationality and published in the UK between 1 April of the year before the prize is awarded and 31 March of the year in which the prize is awarded. Emphasis is on potential and emerging talent.

Short story collections and novellas are also eligible.

and these are the books that have been shortlisted so far:

2007

The Lizard Cage, by Karen Connelly - WINNER
Poppy Shakespeare, by Clare Allan
Bitter Sweets, by Roopa Farooki

2006

Disobedience, by Naomi Alderman - WINNER
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, by Yiyun Li
The Dream Life of Sukhanov, by Olga Grushin

2005

26a, by Diana Evans - WINNER
Lucky Girls, by Nell Freudenberger
How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff