Debi Cates
The first part of this classic story was lighthearted, even Dickensian funny. But, after the first moment titular Bartleby opens his mouth, things grow serious, exasperating, and downright gloomy. Also in a Dickensian way. But this is not a Dickens story. Not at all.
What are we to make of Bartleby? This employee who won't do as he's asked. (Actually, he's a contract laborer so that means he's being asked to do non-paying work.) And although he's courteously asked, we all know when the man who pays “asks” you to do something, it's hardly optional to say that you would prefer not to. Yet Bartleby says just that. And not only that, he does not proffer any explanation as to why not. Exasperating.
The refusals continue. The refusals grow in scope, ultimately he prefers to do no work, but remains at his desk. The narrator, Bartleby's boss, who has taken a easy going approach to his other quirky employees is baffled. And not unreasonably angered. He becomes consumed with finding the correct approach to move this ghostly fellow along, looking for the right and charitable thing to do (although he does recall the Colt and Adams affair where a man, in an office, is brutally murdered over a trifle).
He assess that something is wrong with Bartleby, though he seems fit enough, albeit quite pale. Filling in the blanks – Bartleby is nothing but blanks – his boss concludes Bartleby “is a victim of an innate and incurable disorder.”
Today, we might wonder about autism, severe depression, and bring in H.R.. But this is 1853.
The story is engaging exactly because none of us know the source of the problem, a gloomy problem that is overtaking the office's finely tuned balance of eccentricities under an easy-going boss. We all want a cure for the Bartleby issue and, right up to the end, can't shake the feeling that a remedy can be found. I confess, though, that when given extremely generous offers of help of different employments by his now ex-boss and Bartleby's reply is “I would not like it at all; though, as I said before, I am not particular,” my own empathies moved almost exclusively to the kind boss. Aka, to myself. Aka to all of us who have encountered those in our lives that appear to us to be willfully obstinate and thwart the offers of help they desperately need, causing us to cry out “Well, what then do you want?” And the silent answer is, “To keep doing this,” the destructive thing.
Bartleby's extreme passive self-destruction continues its downward path, leaving a trail of puzzled and exasperated people behind him. As for the narrator, he's left with the soul-tearing knowledge that his generosity was complete impotence and his compassion degraded to guilt.
“Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!”
I enjoyed this book immensely, read for the first time in my life at 64 years old! The cover above is the one on the book I read and it captures the feeling of the story so perfectly.
I can't possibly give an objective review, though. That's because this book, to me, is about another little dark-haired, dark-eyed girl who loved animals, flowers, and the wind in pine trees: My mother.
Heidi was one of the most favorite books from my mom's childhood. She was a lifelong, avid reader, having learned to read very early, perhaps as early as 4 years old. I do know that by age 5 (Heidi's age at the start of the story) and specifically by July 8, 1947, she was being paid a nickel a day to read the daily newspaper aloud to an elderly, nearly blind woman down the street. She read to her the local newspaper, The Roswell Daily Record. But that's another story.
After having finally read Heidi myself, I now wish desperately that I had read it while Mom was still alive and can't quite figure out why I never did, except that with like so many things, we think we have plenty of time and we think we know more than we, in fact, do. It's only after someone is gone that we realize we have questions still. I long for her to tell me all the reasons why she loved it and what those parts of the story meant to her. I would ask how exactly did she learn to read so young. How did she get the book to read before she was even in school yet? Did her older sister, Audrey, with whom she always shared a bedroom, have something to do with it? Did they read it together? Did she cherish that memory of her sister after she died in a car accident when Mom was just 13 and Audrey was just 15? I'll never know.
Instead I have to make my own suppositions, and as I read I was awash in such ponderings. It's not very hard to imagine why my mother – or any little girl – would love Heidi and her story. But as I read, I became aware of extra magic that must have been there for my mom, like the blind neighbors they each read to.
Also I know that my mom's best friend was a neighbor boy and I'm sorry his name escapes me, although I know it wasn't Peter.
I know my mother felt the loss of her father all her life although she was too young to remember much about him; he died during WW II, from tuberculosis when she was just two. She surely related to Heidi being an orphan. Feeling the keen absence of her father, she would have longed for a caring male relative in her life, someone like Heidi's grandfather, Uncle Alp.
Mom's young life was filled with hardships and had to have been harder still for the sensitive, dutiful person she was. Faith, at that time was a regular part of her life as a practicing Catholic until she was a teen; so perhaps the Christian messages about suffering would have been comforting to her.
I also wondered which illustrations were in the book she would have read. In the edition I read, they were the 1956 ones by Cecil Mary Leslie. Mom's copy could only have included those from at least 10 years before that. In my mind's eye I easily saw her, a shy obedient little thing, lying on her bed quietly reading and then stopping for long gazes at the pictures.
I don't know for certain about the things that I've supposed. And I must reconcile that there's nothing to do with my sadness of never knowing. Instead, I can only embrace the gladness that she told me she loved Heidi and how it was an especially pleasant part of her childhood. I am grateful to know those few things for certain, and grateful that reading such an universally beloved story became intertwined with my love and tenderness for another dark-haired, dark-eyed little girl.
What a novel! What a writer!
This is my first time reading Woolf. I had the impression that reading her would be a dour “but important” slog and so had taken my sweet time getting around to reading her. But, whoa, this novel was flat-out an intellectual romp! Made more so because Woolf was a serious writer who, among other writers and artists at that time, wanted to inject the Arts with a new vigor to reflect the complexities of the 20th century.
Orlando is heavy and it is light. It is satire, magical realism, and philosophy.
It is a history and critique of English literature (including biographies; its title is, after all, Orlando: A Biography). It delightfully critiques literary critics too.
It's about poetry. And whole paragraphs and pages within it are poetry, written in prose. I adored those passages, especially in the latter half when Orlando's growth has reached its fever pitch. Is that an example of her stream-of-consciousness writing? I hope so! After a few unhappy experiences – Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Joyce's impenetrable Ulysses – I considered myself distinctly not a fan of the technique. Wonderful Woolf, please convert me.
Of course the novel is widely known as being not only gender but sexually fluid – being done just ever so cleverly as to avoid being banned by the ridiculously real laws of the time (and to think there are those zealots, truly they are the dour ones, who would welcome those laws back in 2024!) – but it is more than that. It is about nothing less than the search for the True Self beyond and outside the reaches of 400 years of society's ignorance. We all can understand we are more, much more than gender labels, right?
It is replete with love. Love of place, love of home, love of nature. And, perhaps the least important (to readers, not to Woolf) it is most famously described as a long love letter to Vita Sackville-West with whom Woolf had a love affair.
It can be read in so many ways. It should be read in so many ways. It is astonishing how much Woolf packed in deliberately, profoundly. When I think about its meaning, for me it can be summarized when Orlando begins to write her longings as “Life and a lover.” Then a page later, it becomes, “Life, a lover.”
All that, and more, is in this one delightful, romping, improbable, silly, serious, and entertaining novel. Wow you, Woolf.
(Is it normal for readers to cry at the end?)
What an odd collection of stories this is – memoir pieces, short stories, ghost stories, travelogues, philosophy dips – all bundled into the myriad of thoughts on Aging by the singular MFK Fisher.
Fisher's writing is sublime. You want to be her friend. You want her to invite you for a meal. You want her to knowingly wink at you across the table during coffee. I took my time with this book, reading only a story a day. I wanted her voice, her astute observations, and the scent of her company to linger in the air with me.
She addresses stages of aging, from the indignities, senility and fears, to the loss of social acceptability, secrets unwittingly revealed, and, of course, she addresses death too. Sometimes, beyond death. This seeming hodgepodge collection makes for a fifteen course meal and along with each course is wonderment. I don't think it's usual for us to think of old people or aging with wonderment. But Fisher does and she illustrates it beautifully to us.
There was one particular story I read twice, back to back, and then again next day. The story is about a woman preparing for a visit from a long absent daughter and grandson. It brought to mind my grandmother who had a passel of grown children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren who regularly visited her. As she aged and found preparing large meals in real time more difficult, she kept a stand-alone freezer filled with her homemade goodness at the ready. Not only did she live through the Depression as a farmer's wife in Oklahoma, but in her retirement was living on Social Security only. Thus, she was rightfully frugal. But that didn't mean frugality of taste. Rather, it meant she had on hand things like jars of apple butter made from the best of the season apples bought at their best price. It meant she had a special tin of saved bacon fat, that flavorful ingredient now anathema to many. And, of course, like any Grandmother worth her salt in those days, she could whip up fresh hot biscuits and gravy in 15 minutes flat. When a rare, young picky eater appeared in the genetic pool, she would sincerely offer a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, asking which direction the grandchild thought it should be halved. Oh, and cut the crusts, too? She would be only too happy to please them, worried about their hunger, not insulted.
But that was the 1960s and 70s. I think that eating at Grandma's is now less common for most of us and for so very many reasons. Does she still live in her home with her own kitchen? Can she expect a visit from those living far away more than every five or ten years? What about the Vegans? The Gluten-free? Lactose intolerant? Those with nut/soy/egg allergies? Or was there a family rift that won't heal? It is all so complicated.
In “A Kitchen Allegory,” the piece I read three times, it is complicated too. Fisher's take, only a few pages long, is done with devastating compassion and accepting pathos.
The whole of Sister Age is like that. Even the pieces that I found odd, they add to Fisher's wide observations about aging and the aged. Together they are an exploration, an inquiry, a testament, or maybe a kind of education as she mentions in the Afterword. I wouldn't take a single story out.
I'm on a campaign to thin my bookshelves. This one is staying to be read again. God willing I myself live to even further old age.
I once did Marie Kondo's process, the one where you collect all like things, put them all on the floor, and then only keep what “sparks joy” after touching each item. It worked a kitchen clean-out. But that's as far as I took it.
Recently, I took a four week online decluttering course for those with ADHD by Deniz Perry. It has worked wonders for me! It's got me back decluttering again but without the vast overwhelm I used to feel and also have overcome the decision paralysis.
So why read this book at all? Because, even though I'm actively and successfully decluttering (it's a process), I knew I needed something else too. I needed more help with decision-making (especially with sentimental items) and a clearer vision where I wanted to be at the end of the process.
Kondo helped me with both struggles. But it does take a bit of “suspense of disbelief” to get there. The repeated catch-phrase “spark joy,” advice on how not to roll up your socks like little balls, and talking to your possessions was pretty silly to me. But I hung in there and captured some good advice that is perhaps hidden by some part in a cultural difference.
Living in an American consumerism society, we paradoxically don't really have a good relationship with our stuff. We all have too much and, at the same time, feel we have too little. That's where some of Kondo's “spark joy” approach can help I think. The silly phrase is a reminder that objects around us should be objects we enjoy, not merely too much clutter filling our garages, our spare rooms, and our attics while emptying our pockets.
For me, it is a different vision I needed. With Kondo's ideas and funny way of talking about “things,” I can now clearly see being surrounded by things that are useful, helpful, and joyful. (And can be found!)
I believe I can now begin to identify items to let go, like things that have a constant association of guilt that has made me keep them. I can more readily let go of a gazillion things that I keep because I “might need” them; those things that I can't find when I do need them.
I also realized how much of my clutter is based on a fear of scarcity that actually takes away legitimate peace of mind. I'd be better off learning to be more resilient and open to new solutions than hoarding in preparation for all disasters. (Covid taught many lessons, including the surprise that ramen and toilet paper were the first to run out, but fresh produce was still abundant, proving we can't really know how to prepare.)
Being able to let go, let go of all the fears and guilts is what this whole book is about. And a clearer space will lead to a clearer mind, and a clearer mind is available to be in the present. And that is my goal.
So, yes, in spite of many eye rolls I had while reading this – the cutesy phrases, the hyper focus on certain things (clothes mostly) and the too much talky-talky that is a problem in many self help books – I have indeed come away with some useable advice.
And I feel pretty sure I can use some important information in this book WITHOUT dumping everything on the floor, an approach that instantly causes me extreme stress.
Intended for “young readers,” in just 96 pages, it is a lively recounting of the history of how the Egyptian hieroglyphs were finally understood. It was the perfect bite-sized information I was looking for, with lots of photos, etchings, and graphic examples of hieroglyphic decoding.
When the stone, with three languages of the same text (a decree), was found by Napaleon's invading army 1799, it had been 1400 years since last anyone could read the hieroglyphs!
It took a few more decades, hindered first by the almost universal misunderstanding that the symbols were all symbols (not sounds). The key in the Rosetta stone was found via names (cartouches), specifically Ptolemy. Once it was proven that each symbols was a sound, it was a huge leap for scholars world wide to decode, building a larger and large understanding of the ancient language, including that it was a mixture of sound-based as well as symbolic. Then, suddenly, the world was awash in knowledge of the amazing ancient Egyptian history and culture, where there previously had been a mystery, a blank.
This was a lot more delightful than I expected, completely charmed me. I love nature in my reading generally and plants are extra special to me, so I lapped up all those lovely, loving descriptions of the Secret Garden and surrounding moor.
I also liked Burnett's treatment of the children Mary and Colin. They both started off as entitled, obnoxious brats – who actually suffered deeply. I would hate to be around them but you can't help but feel sympathy. Then friendship and observing wonderful things in the world around them inspired them, transforming their fears and trauma. They began to learn there was a different way, not only giving them pleasure but also competency. I was reminded of those places people go now, to farms to do chores and spend time with horses or other animals as therapy.
Sure it was a sappy story. But come on, we all could be a bit more sappy. And a bit more happy. Hard to begrudge a children's book for letting readers share in that fresh sense of newly discovered joy.
In this excellent British Museum publication, lovely traditional Japanese haiku poems feature an animal and on the facing page is a presentation of equally lovely Japanese art of those same animals. Often more than one poem is included on a page, much like Basho's renga tradition where one poet answers and continues another poet's poem.
Multiple poets and multiple artists make for a surprisingly unifying experience. And if you are lucky enough to be able to read Japanese, each poem is also presented in Japanese script.
Includes poems that open a space for empathy,
usually hateful, yet the crow too in this dawn snow
– Basho
those that reveal sudden delight,
all over the water fallen blossoms spread, and among them a frog's eyes
— Tomiyasu Fusei
those that invite you to co-create its meaning,
after the snake flees,how quiet the forest is!a lily flower
–Shiki
and even those that make you laugh,
at a mantisI brandish my hand – likea mantis
–Kato Shuson
Some pictures are funnier than others, but overall it's a silly, fun book. I especially got a chuckle out of the sheep, the moose, the elephant, and good guffaw out of the hen picture!
Little Miss EG will dig the silly humor, I bet. I'll save this one to read to her myself. I look forward to her reactions. She'll say something, I'm sure, that will make me laugh out loud.
Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty years ago I picked this up at a garage sale, long after my children were grown but were just beginning to have children of their own.
It has no cover and the first few pages are torn across the bottom. The pages are yellowed and growing brittle. Probably should immediately be walked over to the trash can and dumped in.
I can't bring myself to do that. Raskin's lovely and quirky illustrations are such a visual delight. Instead, all these years I have just tucked it in between two other, er, more upstanding books on my shelf.
Too bad I missed the window of opportunity to overcome its shameful condition and actually read it to any one of the five grandchildren, what with the youngest now being – gulp! – almost seven. I'm certain had I read it aloud to a three-five year old it would have been a hit, all those “oo” sounds building to glee and excitement, anticipating the next animal that Sue adds among her travel companions. It's just the kind of thing that a kiddo would beg to have read to them over and over.
I bet that explains the same dilemma of the previous owner who also couldn't throw it away and instead put it in a garage sale for a nickel. A velveteen rabbit of sorts.
P.S. I read a review here from someone who said this was their favorite book growing up. They now want to have a tattoo of Sue. I love that.
Squeeeeeee! I'd give this 100 stars if I could.
I lived in Lebanon in the 70s and the book's illustrator, Mona Trad Dabaji, has captured the sights, sounds, and flavor of the Lebanon of my memory so perfectly. I'm in heaven and can't wait to share this with the Littles – my 2 youngest granddaughters – and their mother who went to me for a reunion in Lebanon back in 1999 when she was 17 and she also fell in love with the people and culture.
The text is also an utter delight, written in rhyming English couplets, followed by the same message in French and Arabic. So apt as most Lebanese are fluent in all three and often conversations will easily flow seamlessly between the languages. The story uses numbers 1-10, to tell the story of a family visit, “one old house...” “two doors...” “three kisses...”, etc.
This book was published in Lebanon, too. Another hurrah.
I will give this book to my grands as planned but it will be hard to do as it is already so precious to me even though I've had it for a mere 5 minutes. Must search for a second copy for another Little, little old me.
This lovely novel ticks off so many of my “what makes a novel enjoyable” checklist.It's a thrill when a story begins with a premise one can't help but ponder. Oh my, just how would it be to be a housekeeper who must re-introduce herself to the professor every morning due to his short-term memory loss? What must it be like to be the professor, to be able to recall life before his accident but after that only the last 80 minutes?He struggles every morning to simply re-emerge into the current world, decades beyond his last memory in 1975. Luckily he has the love of and excellent mind for numbers to give him continuity. The housekeeper struggles to make a simple living for her and her son and must please the demands of ever-changing homeowners assigned to her by her employment agency. While the professor doesn't care much about housekeeping, instead she must introduce herself and her son to him every day simply to gain entry. Never mind what happened or what was discussed the day before.Somehow these three vulnerable, struggling people forge a friendship they build anew each morning.Ogawa creates a world I looked forward to going to, of a run-down cottage in Japan, of walks with cherry blossoms fluttering down, of a thunder storm arriving right at dusk – all that stuff that I crave. I want novels that are not just about humans blathering at one another, but also about places with weather, trees, and dusty windowsills. And then the Math! Prime numbers are everywhere and, with Ogawa's deft and lyrical writing, for days I was transported into the wonderment of prime numbers. Near the end there is one special intriguing formula revealed. Squee! What's not to love?Recently, I read another novel from Japan, my first: [b:Kokoro 762476 Kokoro Natsume Sōseki https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327991553l/762476.SY75.jpg 1977713]. These two couldn't be more different. Honestly, I resented almost every minute spent with the unhappy, selfish characters there. When I finished it, I worried Japanese novels were not to my taste. I'm so very glad I didn't stop there. I have a new book to add to my “Best Loved” shelf.
I listened to the Librivox audio version of this very short story and was profoundly moved.
Atherton explores a very particular time of grief, the minutes or hours when a love one is moving toward death, when we see them transform from what we love and know so well to the utterly unknowable, and often unrecognizable. With frank realism she captures how disheartening, even frightening, that can be to witness.
The volunteer reader, Joseph Finkberg was stunning! He gave such power and emotion to his reading that I was sorry to see that, thus far, he has not done a full solo Librivox book. But I will definitely seek out his other readings. It blows my mind that such caliber of readings can be found on Librivox, available to the world for free.
Another volunteer, one here on Goodreads, injected even more meaning for me. Chen Xin's review transformed the “horror” description of the short story into a much more meaningful assessment. I was so grateful to read his in depth review that I even reached out with a comment, something as a shy lurker I rarely do.
A mere 24 pages, a short 15 minute audio, and yet I was so moved by this short story!
I almost didn't finish this novel. I forced myself because of the novel's high reputation in Japan and its GR ratings.
But I distinctly did not like it.
I struggled almost from the beginning. I couldn't relate to the feelings – oh, so very many feelings! – of the two male characters who seemed more like moody teens than young adult men. I did not relate to the angst they each continually felt and how incapable either were of coming to a satisfactory conclusion given even the slightest dilemma. I did not care for having to brood along with them, paragraph upon paragraph, with their navel-gazing, hand-wringing, and self-doubts – which was the major content of the book.
I didn't understand why no one had names, only relationship nicknames (or just an initial in one case). I didn't understand why their fields of study weren't identified. Why not? I didn't understand why all the women were either stupid according to these young men or were suspicious even though all the goodness and caring emanating in this novel were from women. I didn't even understand why the narrator took an instant fondness for “Sensei” upon first sight at a beach and diligently sought out his company. Sensei seemed like poor company to me, but the narrator couldn't stop thinking about him and craving time with him. And for heaven's sake, did their situations warrant struggling with Life so hard? I didn't see it. Only one character had real struggles and he made his life intentionally even more miserable. No doubt Life includes suffering but these characters seemed intent on making damn sure it was ALL suffering.
Yes, the plot is revealed (eventually at the end) as a tragedy and that made me sincerely sad. But I don't know how being privy to so many anguished inner thoughts, most of which were minor and vacillating and launched by a look or a silence or even by paranoia, was supposed to engage me for the bulk of the novel. It was tedium. Well, it was tedium coming from non-teens. If these guys were maybe 12-14 it might have provoked more empathy from me.
I feel sure my poor assessment is due to my very slim knowledge of Japan's long history and rich culture (which I understand includes a very long history of extreme patriarchy). The novel must be dependent upon that cultural understanding of which I am lacking.
(I just learned the theme might address the national cultural change that was embodied by the death of Emperor Meiji. Or perhaps it is about the pitfalls of the growing Western influence in the early twentieth century in Japan. Or the trend toward identifying too closely with the Ego and away from the previous cultural importance of personal responsibility and family. Well, maybe. But those are nuances only after I read what Wikipedia said. They certainly didn't come to my mind while simply reading the book and sadly still don't redeem my overall opinion.)
It was just not a book for me. Not all books are.
Other reviewers did not find aspects of this novel credible. I did.The main character, Ellinor had a friend Anna, a friend of her young adulthood, who died young and unexpectedly. After Anna's death, Ellinor discovered a betrayal by her friend. There is something special about those friendships that begin when we are young adults, just beginning to make our life's path and becoming ourselves. Those friendships, even if not extraordinarily long, are uniquely important. So, even decades later, Ellinor, at 70, still longed for the solace of that friendship with Anna. It was not surprising she would turn once again to talking to Anna, or rather talking to her memory of Anna.It was after Anna's death and after the simultaneous death of Ellinor's first husband that she as a widow became close to Anna's widowed husband Georg. In time she married him and raised Anna's children. It was after Georg's death when Ellinor began wishing she could share with her friend the ways she loved Georg and the problematic relationships with Anna's boys as grown men. She directed her thoughts to Anna, thoughts about her detoured life, the one created specifically because Anna's ended. Ellinor had forgiven Anna. She could even acknowledge that Anna might have cared deeply for those she hurt and been torn herself by those acts of betrayal. That's not surprising. My experience is that when a person dies and after sufficient time has passed, many grudges and hurt feelings die too, leaving the best parts, the love in that relationship, alive. We forgive the dead.I liked Ellinor. She seemed real to me: decent, likeable, not perfect. She was a person who had long postponed thinking too deeply. The novel's interwoven drama concerning the remaining living family members was petty and unpleasant. It illustrated the significant aspect of Ellinor's lifelong story of feeling a fraud, ashamed for being who she was by no fault of her own. Once she found she could disconnect with one of the sons, a man negatively astonished by, in his opinion, her radical relocation and insulted by her new expression of frank but accurate opinions, she was free to let go – like her spare new apartment, she was becoming free of all that which was not-Ellinor.I enjoyed Grøndahl's style. It is also praise-worthy that he wrote convincingly from a woman's point of view. I have mixed feelings making that observation. But let's acknowledge that happens more rarely than it probably should or could, and I want to give kudos when done well.Ellinor's journey at 70 is to become herself, to find fresh fulfilments among her heartbreaks. I am reminded of another novel I read this year, [b:Memento Mori 120158 Memento Mori Muriel Spark https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348186701l/120158.SY75.jpg 2934614] featuring also a septuagenarian who said this about a long life's journey, “We all appear to ourselves frustrated in our old age, Alec, because we cling to everything so much. But in reality we are still fulfilling our lives.”
I looooooved the first story, “The Author of the Acacia Seeds.” I wish it was a whole novel.
The rest is a struggle for me. Le Guin is entertaining and thought-provoking. However, there is always something dark and sad and hopeless in her stories. In the world we live in today, there's so much to fret about that also fretting about a world that doesn't exist (yet) is not where I am in my life.
A very good story! And to think it was written 40 years ago but only now a subject coming onto my radar: the incredible ecosystem of oaks and how they are part of our garden and the earth's “keystone” plants. (See Doug Tallamy, eg. [b:The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees 54110488 The Nature of Oaks The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees Douglas W. Tallamy https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1608663515l/54110488.SX50.jpg 84458549])The illustrations were lovely and a delight to look at but I do wish they had been more in detailed sync with the story.
2 stars = It was ok
I bought this to give to my 7 year old granddaughter who is a precocious reader. I was looking for something to stimulate and challenge her.
But that won't be this book. It was ok, some light humor here and there. Mostly it was merely a rewashing of stereotypes and several tropes. All pretty silly. Nothing special.
In the last chapter, we get a heavy-handed announcement it will be a series, since the mysteries weren't solved. What? That's an ugly money grab if you ask me. Nothing wrong with series, but each book should finish its business, not dangle another purchase without even giving some satisfaction within the first book. Sheesh.
No, I won't give this to a little girl I care very much about. She has a better mind than to clutter it with this book that isn't even a book in its own right. She'll read plenty of subpar stuff in her life. But not in the books given to her by her grannie.
This is not a mystery novel, although it does center around anonymous phone calls made to seniors, with the stark message, “Remember, you must die.”
Filled with a dizzying number of septuagenarians and octogenarians who cope with ailments, arguments, old love affairs, and with wills – both the threatening and the actual rewriting of them – it is remarkably entertaining throughout.
Spark was just 41 when this novel came out. She showed uncanny insight toward her aged characters as they headed toward death. But death, even for those so closely approaching it, remains an abstraction for them in spite of the advice of the phone caller to “remember.” As one of the more philosophical characters, Taylor, says this near the end of the novel,
“We all appear to ourselves frustrated in our old age, Alec, because we cling to everything so much. But in reality we are still fulfilling our lives.”
Even as a mere sexagenarian, I love that line. A wonderful, funny, thought-provoking novel. It may become one of my all-time favorites.