Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By & by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep & know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow’s springs are the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.
–Gerard Manley Hopkins
Grief is such an individual, totally consuming, and heart-wrenching experience — especially when the death is by a young person or is totally unexpected. This book explores the grief process very well. Margaret and Nico are teenage sisters. While Nico generally seeks out her parent’s approval, Margaret is a little on the wild side. However, that is not what gets her killed. Margaret has a heart problem and ends up drowning in the lake near their home.
The story is told from Nico’s point of view, and about her struggle to get through each day, each month, each year. She worries about her own health and about how her parents are coping with her sister’s death. She’s concerned for her sister’s boyfriend and how he’s dealing with it. She even endures those around her who try to make her into parts of Margaret instead of herself.
Finally, the story ends with an adult Nico writing about how she and her family have recovered from their grief over the years. Although — as anyone knows who has been through it — you never really get over the death of someone close to you.
I just love Neil Gaiman (not to mention that his looks remind me of a close friend I had in college). Well, I love his books, too, and this one was no exception. It’s my third Gaiman, and although I still think I liked Coraline a tiny bit better, I loved The Graveyard Book.
Just like Coraline, I listened to this on audio with my two teenage sons. If you haven’t heard Gaiman narrate his own books, you’re definitely missing out. Most authors should not narrate their own books; Gaiman is one who should never allow someone else to do so. His voice is perfect for it, and of course, no one would ever know his books better than he does.
The Graveyard Book contains a colorful (though some are long dead) cast of characters, some very creepy scenes, and some genuinely heartwarming ones. It’s one of those perfect children’s/YA books in which it was definitely written to also appeal to adults. It was great for the R.I.P. Challenge, and it was great to experience another one of Gaiman’s treasures as a family.
The original Swedish title of this book meansMen Who Hated Women, and that title is an excellent forewarning about what the book is about. If you like gritty crime novels or shows like CSI, you’ll probably love the book. My eyes and stomach prefer much milder fare, but I’ll still probably read the second installment, The Girl Who Played with Fire, when it comes out next year.
The girl who has the dragon tattoo is Lisbeth Salander, a girl in her mid-twenties who is a PI and can find out just about everything about anyone. I liked her. A lot. Her character was fascinating and Larsson ends the book in such a way that leaves you wanting to hear more of her story and background.
Mikael Blomqvist is a journalist who has just lost a court case for libel, which then puts his reputation and his magazine Millennium at risk. He decides to temporarily leave the paper in the hands of his partner to save face. Enter Henrik Vanger. Vanger is the former CEO of his family business, the Vanger Corporation. He hires Blomqvist to write a family history of the Vangers as a pretext to dig into the disappearance of his niece, Harriet Vanger. The case has been cold for decades and though Mikael believes he won’t be able to find any new evidence, he accepts. This is where the book really grabbed me and kept me reading until 1 am to learn the outcome.
The book really has three storylines to it, the Harriet Vanger story is in the middle, with Lisbeth Salander’s story on the outside of that, and with Mikael Blomqvist’s story on the very outer edges. Consequently, the climax occurs with quite a few pages still left in the book. So at first it felt like the book should be over, but then after awhile I was able to get into the secondary and tertiary stories as well.
As I stated in the beginning, it really is about men who hate women, so if you read it be prepared for what that involves. I didn’t care for the more graphic scenes in the book, but I do know that not everyone is as sensitive to that as I am. And I do want to find out more about the girl with the dragon tattoo when The Girl Who Played with Fire comes out next year.
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) by Anne-Marie MacDonald
1990, 89 pp. Rating:
Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is hilariously fun. Winner of the 1990 Governor General’s Award for Drama and written by the author of Fall on Your Knees, this play takes the main character, Constance, and puts her in the middle of Othello and Romeo and Juliet with very funny results. Plot lines are changed, lines rearranged, and we get to really know the players as never before.
If you’re familiar with both plays you will be in stitches in parts. Lines from the original plays are in italics to help the reader know the difference between those lines and MacDonald’s. Even MacDonald’s are written in iambic pentameter.
Highly recommended — especially for lovers of Shakespeare or those participating in the Canadian Literature Challenge.
I knew I would probably enjoy The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle because it’s about a girl growing up in a small town in Colorado — this girl did the same.
Alice Winston lives on a horse ranch in the desert with her father and reclusive mother, while her older sister Nona has run off with a cowboy riding the rodeo circuit. With her sister gone, Alice’s father struggles to make the ranch profitable by boarding the horses of the wealthier women in town. It’s a lot of work for just the two of them, and somehow they make do for awhile. But all of them miss Nona and can’t understand why she’d leave the family and the ranch.
Meanwhile, Alice is dealing with being accepted at school and recovering from the death of a classmate. She experiences her first kiss and her first crush. She tries to make sense of the adults around her. I sympathized with Alice and winced at the all too familiar pains of growing up. I rooted for things to go her way. Sadly, however, life doesn’t always turn out the way we plan. Sometimes we just have to accept the way things are.
The Gathering by Anne Enright won the Booker Prize in 2007. The novel is about family relationships, grief, and memory. Veronica comes from a large family of 12 siblings (plus several stillbirths). Her closest brother Liam has just committed suicide, and as she deals with her grief about losing her brother, the event dredges up some fairly shocking childhood memories. Soon she doesn’t know how she feels about either of her families — either her childhood family or even her husband and children.
The language and scenes are shocking and graphic. The subject matter is dark and depressing. Normally, I would have predicted that I would have hated this book, and I can see why many don’t like it. But, Enright’s writing drew me in. Veronica’s voice is so brutally honest it cut through me. Definitely not for everyone, but it’s a book you think about long after you’ve finished it, and in my mind, that’s the mark of a good one. 2007, 261 pp. Rating: 4/5 2007 Booker Prize winner
"For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil." Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? (1 Peter 3:12-13, ESV)
I just love Neil Gaiman (not to mention that his looks remind me of a close friend I had in college). Well, I love his books, too, and this one was no exception. It’s my third Gaiman, and although I still think I liked 
Neil Gaiman’s 
The original Swedish title of this book means Men Who Hated Women, and that title is an excellent forewarning about what the book is about. If you like gritty crime novels or shows like CSI, you’ll probably love the book. My eyes and stomach prefer much milder fare, but I’ll still probably read the second installment, The Girl Who Played with Fire, when it comes out next year.
I knew I would probably enjoy The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle because it’s about a girl growing up in a small town in Colorado — this girl did the same.
The Gathering by Anne Enright won the Booker Prize in 2007. The novel is about family relationships, grief, and memory. Veronica comes from a large family of 12 siblings (plus several stillbirths). Her closest brother Liam has just committed suicide, and as she deals with her grief about losing her brother, the event dredges up some fairly shocking childhood memories. Soon she doesn’t know how she feels about either of her families — either her childhood family or even her husband and children.
