Finding Freedom A Cook's Story Remaking a Life From Scratch by Erin French

 For me food wasn’t a competition about who could make the best dish. It’s greatest power was to take taste and turn it into a long-lasting memory.~ from Finding Freedom by Erin French

I had never heard of The Lost Kitchen or Erin French before I read an excerpt of her memoir on BookishFirst. The author described her idyllic childhood in Maine with such detail and love, I was charmed. 

Erin French's memoir made me recall how much we loved Maine, leaving behind Philadelphia with its yellow haze and heat and noise and rush. We spent seven years vacationing in Maine, one year for a whole month, tent camping at Acadia National Park. We loved sitting along the pink cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, watching the lobster boats pulling up and setting their traps.  

Mostly we ate around the campfire, but several days we would splurge on a meal of lobster on the beach or steamers in a diner. One year we went to a post-season, $5 dinner of lobster, rock crab, and corn on the cob  at a little diner. We were surrounded by locals who coolly watched me struggle to cracking open the crab. Finally, a grizzled man in a cap and denim jacket stood up, and grabbed the crab from my hands and expertly cracked it, shaking his head.

French lovingly describes the food of her childhood, made by her grandmother or by her father at his diner. Building on these roots, she took simple, wholesome, locally sourced foods,and with a artist's creative twist, served culinary delights.

But French's story was not all pink Rugosa roses and wild berries. She grew up in a dysfunctional family ruled by her father, a man who worked hard running his diner and drank too much, a distant, judgmental, controlling man. French planned to escape life in small town Freedom, Maine, by going to college in Boston. Instead, she returned to her family home, an unwed mother.

French had built a life for herself and her son when an older man pursued her and she fell in love. When she finally started her dream restaurant, her marriage became strained along with her health. Her husband was a man much like her father, controlling, selfish, a drinker.

A physician over-prescribed medications to help her cope with her pain and depression, which lead to rehab and her husband ceasing the restaurant--and her son. When insurance ran out before she was fully recovered, broke and in despair, she returned to her family home to start over. 

Again.

French needed to prove she could support her son. She worked hard and created her pop-up restaurant, using locally sourced foods and building a clientele. She remembered the foods served by her grandmother, recreating the joyous experience for others. 

The Lost Kitchen became famous, people lining up for a chance to experience French's cuisine.

French's vulnerability and openness about her struggles allows readers to become immersed in her sorrows and her joys. It is a story of the ways women are victims and how women can fight for self-determination. 

French credits her New England heritage of hard work as the root of her success. But also the eighteen-hour days working at her father's diner, even while pregnant, even when he was having a private drinking party with friends on the back porch as she ran the restaurant, for he taught her the basics of cooking.

If you love food, if you love a story of a woman's resilience and success, if you like a family drama of pain and healing, if you enjoy books about healing and finding wholeness, you will love Finding Freedom.

I received an ARC from the publisher through Bookish First. My review is fair and unbiased.

Finding Freedom:A Cook's Story Remaking a Life From Scratch

by Erin French

Celadon Books

Publication Date: April 6, 2021

ISBN: 9781250312341

from the publisher

Long before The Lost Kitchen became a world dining destination with every seating filled the day the reservation book opens each spring, Erin French was a girl roaming barefoot on a 25-acre farm, a teenager falling in love with food while working the line at her dad’s diner and a young woman finding her calling as a professional chef at her tiny restaurant tucked into a 19th century mill. This singular memoir—a classic American story—invites readers to Erin’s corner of her beloved Maine to share the real person behind the “girl from Freedom” fairytale, and the not-so-picture-perfect struggles that have taken every ounce of her strength to overcome, and that make Erin’s life triumphant. 

In Finding Freedom, Erin opens up to the challenges, stumbles, and victories that have led her to the exact place she was ever meant to be, telling stories of multiple rock-bottoms, of darkness and anxiety, of survival as a jobless single mother, of pills that promised release but delivered addiction, of a man who seemed to offer salvation but in the end ripped away her very sense of self. And of the beautiful son who was her guiding light as she slowly rebuilt her personal and culinary life around the solace she found in food—as a source of comfort, a sense of place, as a way of bringing goodness into the world. Erin’s experiences with deep loss and abiding hope, told with both honesty and humor, will resonate with women everywhere who are determined to find their voices, create community, grow stronger and discover their best-selves despite seemingly impossible odds. Set against the backdrop of rural Maine and its lushly intense, bountiful seasons, Erin reveals the passion and courage needed to invent oneself anew, and the poignant, timeless connections between food and generosity, renewal and freedom

.

About the Author

Erin French is the owner and chef of The Lost Kitchen, a 40-seat restaurant in Freedom, Maine, that was recently named one TIME Magazine’s World’s Greatest Places and one of “12 Restaurants Worth Traveling Across the World to Experience” by Bloomberg. 

A born-and-raised native of Maine, she learned early the simple pleasures of thoughtful food and the importance of gathering for a meal. Her love of sharing Maine and its delicious heritage with curious dinner guests and new friends alike has garnered attention in outlets such as The New York Times (her piece was one of the ten most read articles in the food section the year it was published), Martha Stewart Living, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and Food & Wine. 

She has been invited to share her story on NPR’s All Things Considered, The Chew, CBS This Morning, and The Today Show. Erin was featured in a short film made by Tastemade in partnership with L. L. Bean, which won a James Beard Award, and The Lost Kitchen Cookbook has been named one of the best cookbooks by The Washington Post, Vogue.com, and Remodelista and was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award.

Meditations: The Annotated Edition by Marcus Aurelius

I first learned about Marcus Aurelius's Meditations when my World Literature teacher handed out mimeographed sheets to my twelfth grade high school class. 

A year later I was in an Ancient Philosophy class at a small liberal arts college reading the Meditations. Shortly after, I purchased a antique copy with a 1902 gift dedication. 

Inside is a vintage Wendy's napkin, yellow and red, on which I had written down favorite passages.

I was eighteen when I first read the entire Meditations. Fifty years later, seeing this annotated version in a new translation, I thought it would be interesting to revisit the work again. 

My antique volume is stilted in language. "But do thou, I say, simply and freely choose the better, and hold on to it--" is one quote on that napkin. In this new version I read, "So, as I say, you must simply and freely choose the better course and stay with it."

The Preface introduces readers to Stoicism and the historical Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor whose military victories protecting belies the private man who would have chosen a life of contemplation. But, as Aurelius reminds himself often in these thoughts, we must uncomplainingly embrace our lot in life. And besides, nothing external can alter our command center and internal values. Unless we allow it.

It is that which I recall most being impressed with--the idea that what people think and do is their problem, and cannot affect me, unless I allow it. It gave me a great sense of control and also the freedom to think and act differently.

...remember that it's not people's actions that disturb our peace of mind...but our own opinions of their actions.~Notebook 11, Meditations

The Stoic world view embraced by Aurelius is moral and ethical, and divinely ordered. Life and death is a natural cycle, our bodily atoms reentering the matter of the universe, while our spirit had a brief pneumatic afterlife. 

The present is all one has.~ from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Aurelius constantly reminds himself that we only have this moment in time; the past and the future is not ours. So every moment we must decide to live according to our 'command center' and Stoic values. 

A core part of those values involves being a part of human society, showing fairness and forgiveness, for we are to serve one another. 

Have I done something that contributes to the common good? Then I've been benefited.~from Mediations by Marcus Aurelius

Comfort and Pleasure should not affect our actions, we should not complain or become angry or lose control over our passions. We have no control over what happens to us. But we can control our response. 

The notebooks were Aurelius's contemplation, self-examination, and a reminder to follow the discipline of Stoicism. There is repetition of ideas, references to well known Greek philosophers and to forgotten men.

I read an ebook. I could click on the footnote number and up popped the annotation for the passage, a very useful device. The notes greatly increased my understanding of the passage. 

The translation is accessible and modern, sometimes even conversational as if the writer were talking to us. 

At the start of the day tell yourself: I shall meet people who are officious, ungrateful, abusive, treacherous, malicious, and selfish. In every case, they've got like this because of their ignorance of good and bad....None of them can harm me, anyway, because none of them can infect me with immorality, nor can I become angry with someone who's related to me, or hate him, because we were born to work together, like feet or hands or eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. To work against each other is therefore unnatural--and anger and rejections count as "working against." ~Notebook 2, 1, Meditations The Annotated Edition

These teachings are as relevant today as in Roman times. We need to be continually reminded to "work together."

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Meditations: The Annotated Edition

by Marcus Aurelius
Perseus Books, Basic Books
Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 9781541673854
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

This definitive annotated translation of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations is an insightful look into the mind of Ancient Rome's sixteenth emperor.  

 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 CE) was the sixteenth emperor of Rome—and by far the most powerful man in the world. Yet he was also an intensely private person, with a rich interior life and one of the wisest minds of his generation. He collected his thoughts in notebooks, gems that have come to be called his Meditations. 

Never intended for publication, the work has proved an inexhaustible source of wisdom and one of the most important Stoic texts of all time. In often passionate language, the entries range from one-line aphorisms to essays, from profundity to bitterness. This annotated edition offers the definitive translation of this classic and much beloved text, with copious notes from world-renowned classics expert Robin Waterfield. It illuminates one of the greatest works of popular philosophy for new readers and enriches the understanding of even the most devoted Stoic.

Covid-19 Life: Vaccinated! and Some Interesting Handkerchiefs Find a Home

Hooray! My spouse and I have both received our second Covid-19 vaccinations. April 8 is the day we can begin to cautiously reenter the world: missed doctor appointments are first up on the list. 

New on my TBR NetGalley shelf is

• Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid: The Fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate Change by Thor Hanson
• The Magician by Colm Toibin, fiction about the novelist Thomas Mann 
• Rooted by Lynda Lynn Haupt whose Mozart's Starling I deeply enjoyed
• Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, story of a daredevil female aviator
• Theater for Dreamers by Polly Sampson

The pandemic has motivated me to think about 'last things' and where 'things' will at last end up.

In other words, its time to find homes for some things I have collected.

First up, three handkerchiefs signed by First Ladies.

In 1993 a signed handkerchief collection belonging to Mrs Mildred Maulding was sold off on eBay. I purchased three of the handkerchiefs signed by First Ladies, including Bess Wallace Truman, Patricia Nixon, and Betty Ford. I believe I paid about $15 each.

The handkerchief signed by Betty Ford came with a letter from the White House that is dated February 5,1975. It is addressed to Mrs. Mildred Maulding, 1301 Northeast Glendale Avenue, Peoria, Illinois 60603 and is from Nancy M. Howe, Special Assistant to Mrs Ford. The letter confirmed that the handkerchief was from Betty Ford. The handkerchief signed by Bess Wallace Truman is dated 6/7/68.

The seller, Nancy Ashburst, included an appraisal of the collection in a letter dated 1993. In the collection were handkerchiefs signed by astronauts John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, James Lovell, Frank Borman, William Anders, Wally Schirra, and James McDivitt; actors and entertainers Mary Pickford, Jane Withers, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Grace de Monaco, and Richard Chamberlain; Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird, Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower, Harry S. and Bess Truman, Hubert and Muriel Humphrey, Everett Dirksen, and Eugene McCarthy; religious leaders Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale; authors Zane Grey, Pearl Buck, Edgar Guest; famous physicians Jonas Salk and Charles W. Mayo and Christian Barnard, the first transplant patient; and from the world of music, Robert Merrill, Herb Alpert, and Meredith Willson. The total collection was valued at nearly $3,000.

I would have LOVED TO BUY THEM ALL! But I did not have much to spare. These three hankies were a steal at half their appraised value.

The collector, Mildred Dorothy Maulding, was born February 6, 1897 to Charles Sturman and Minnie Alice. She married Charles DeWitt Ashby and they had two children, Charles DeWitt and Billy Dee. On June 11, 1949, Mildred married Emory Maulding.

Mildred died at age 80 in 1977. Her obituary shows she was born in Shawneetown and was buried in McLeansboro, that she was a member of the Baptist church, Eastern Star, and White Shrine.

I got in touch with the presidential museums for each First Lady and have arranged to donate the handkerchiefs to them.

I also got in touch with the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. I want to donate a rare campaign souvenir handkerchief to them, sold on eBay as a 'circus elephant' for a dollar or so. It is silk, with a Republican elephant wearing a blanket with a bit 'H' for Hoover and a 'C' for his VP Curtis.

So, a trip to the post office is also in my post-vaccination to-do list.

Next it is time to clear out some quilts. I have a double closet and a linen closet filled with them...

Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge

 

"Their need was monstrous." 

It wasn't only the barn cats that frightened Libertie by their demands and needs. Every one seemed to want something from her. 

First, her mother, a free, black, homeopathic doctor who determined that Libertie would follow into her career. Her mother was deemed a saint, caring for the whole world, secreting slaves into freedom, and healing black and white alike.

Libertie was overwhelmed by the diseases of the body, but it was the diseases of the mind that most troubled her soul, including the unrequited love of a newly freed slave, and the broken people who gathered in a back room, free but never safe from the trauma of their past. Her mother's cures could not heal broken spirits.

Libertie's light-skinned mother was allowed to touch the white women's bodies, but they flinched at Libertie's touch. She was Black Girl. How could her mother minister to the people who hated them for the war? How could her mother ignore history for the sake of money?

During the Civil War, the women gathered to create a hospital, and Libertie felt the power of their communal energy. She learned from their example how to scheme to right a wrong world.The world felt full of possibilities and Libertie marveled over her choices.

Libertie was sent to college where she first experienced the world outside of her mother. She hoped to forge her own path. She hated the medical coursework, and her classmates were 'colorstruck' against her. 

Music saved her; hearing two girls singing, she presents herself as their pupil.  Singing, her soul soared. But she discovers the girls have a special relationship that can never include her.

Returning home, Libertie meets the recent medical school graduate working under her mother, the light skinned, straight haired, Haitian, Emmanuel. He weaves stories of a beautiful country ruled by Negroes, a place where blacks can be truly free. 

Emmanuel enchants Libertie with his stories of the Haitian African gods still worshiped, although attacked by his Bishop father. He proclaims to believe in 'companionate marriage,' a modern understanding. She accepts his marriage proposal. She had failed as a daughter, as a medical student; perhaps she would find herself as a wife and mother.

Haiti is beautiful, but is not the paradise she had imagined. Emmanuel's family resents her, and she discovers a double standard that her husband is complicit in maintaining. 

In her quest to discover who she is, to find real freedom, Libertie finds herself boxed in by expectations and limited choices, until she finds the courage to take control of her destiny.

Every generation must find its own way, every woman pushes against the societal, familial, and political forces that bind her. Libertie's story is set in the past, but her story will be recognized by young women today. What does it mean to forge your own path, to be free to be yourself? How do we discover who we really are in a world of demands? 

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Libertie: A Novel
by Kaitlyn Greenidge
Algonquin Books
Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 9781616207014
hard cover $26.95 (USD)

about the author

Kaitlyn Greenidge's debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, was one of the New York Times Critics’ Top 10 Books of 2016 and a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times, and her writing has also appeared in Vogue, Glamour, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Greenidge lives in Brooklyn, New York.

from the publisher

The critically acclaimed and Whiting Award–winning author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman returns with Libertie, an unforgettable story about one young Black girl’s attempt to find a place where she can be fully, and only, herself.

Coming of age as a freeborn Black girl in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, Libertie Sampson is all too aware that her purposeful mother, a practicing physician, has a vision for their future together: Libertie is to go to medical school and practice alongside her. \ 

But Libertie, drawn more to music than science, feels stifled by her mother’s choices and is hungry for something else—is there really only one way to have an autonomous life? And she is constantly reminded that, unlike her mother, who can pass, Libertie has skin that is too dark. 

When a young man from Haiti proposes to Libertie and promises she will be his equal on the island, she accepts, only to discover that she is still subordinate to him and all men. As she tries to parse what freedom actually means for a Black woman, Libertie struggles with where she might find it—for herself and for generations to come.

Inspired by the life of one of the first Black female doctors in the United States and rich with historical detail, Kaitlyn Greenidge’s new and immersive novel will resonate with readers eager to understand our present through a deep, moving, and lyrical dive into our complicated past.

Eleanor in the Village: Eleanor Roosevelt's Search for Freedom and Identity in New York's Greenwich Village by Jan Jarboe Ruseell

 

Eleanor in the Village contends that Eleanor Roosevelt's association with New York's Greenwich Village and the friends she made there had a major impact on the formation of her personal identity outside of her marriage to Franklin. I had hoped to learn details about her activities in the Village.

Jan Jarboe Russell gives readers a brief biography of Eleanor's entire life, which for a reader like myself who has read numerous books on Eleanor and Franklin was a recap of known history. She does give space to the many friendships Eleanor made with Village friends, particularly lesbian friends who were very special to her. She shared her private getaway Val Kill with one lesbian couple, and taught in a school opened one of the partners. A female journalist became her close friend and lived in the White House for a time.

Russell mentions the activities that spurred Hoover to open a secret FBI file on her: support of unions and workers and civil rights activities considered communist or socialist in those days. Pages of those files are still unlocked.

I wanted to know more about her activities in the village. I was disappointed by the lack of depth. Russell mentions that Eleanor knew writers living in the Village, like Thomas Wolfe. I sure wanted to know more about this!

An interesting point is Russell's interpretation of Eleanor's relationships with both lesbian friends, like Lorena Hick, and men she loved, including her body guard, doctor, and Joe Lash. As she does also with Franklin's relationship with Missy LeHand, his 'office wife'. Most biographers admit there is no concrete evidence that any of these relationships were sexual in nature or romantic on the Roosevelts' side. Russell is surer.

What is clear is that after Eleanor discovered her husband's affair with her personal secretary, she formed her own 'families' to love, becoming closer to these people than her own children. 

Eleanor's story of personal growth is inspiring. That the 'ugly' child from a dysfunctional family, whose mother-in-law ruled her home and life, and whose husband betrayed her, turned out to be a respected, world renowned humanitarian leader could be a fairy tale. But there was no magic involved. With dear friends and strength of will, Eleanor transformed her life.

I would recommend this biography to those who are not familiar with Eleanor Roosevelt. In fact, it would be a good first biography for young adults.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Eleanor in the Village: Eleanor Roosevelt's Search for Freedom and Identity in New York's Greenwich Village
by Jan Jarboe Russell
Scribner
Pub Date March 30, 2021 
ISBN: 9781501198151
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A vivid and incisive account of a mostly unknown yet critical chapter in the life of Eleanor Roosevelt—when she moved to New York’s Greenwich Village, shed her high-born conformity, and became the progressive leader who pushed for change as America’s First Lady.

Hundreds of books have been written about FDR and Eleanor, both together and separately, but yet she remains a compelling and elusive figure. And, not much is known about why in 1920, Eleanor suddenly abandoned her duties as a mother of five and moved to Greenwich Village, then the symbol of all forms of transgressive freedom—communism, homosexuality, interracial relationships, and subversive political activity. Now, in this fascinating, in-depth portrait, Jan Russell pulls back the curtain on Eleanor’s life to reveal the motivations and desires that drew her to the Village and how her time there changed her political outlook.

A captivating blend of personal history detailing Eleanor’s struggle with issues of marriage, motherhood, financial independence, and femininity, and a vibrant portrait of one of the most famous neighborhoods in the world, this unique work examines the ways that the sensibility, mood, and various inhabitants of the neighborhood influenced the First Lady’s perception of herself and shaped her political views over four decades, up to her death in 1962.

When Eleanor moved there, the Village was a neighborhood of rogues and outcasts, a zone of Bohemians, misfits, and artists. But there was also freedom there, a miniature society where personal idiosyncrasy could flourish. Eleanor joined the cohort of what then was called “The New Women” in Greenwich Village. Unlike the flappers in the 1920s, the New Women had a much more serious agenda, organizing for social change—unions for workers, equal pay, protection for child workers—and they insisted on their own sexual freedom. These women often disagreed about politics—some, like Eleanor, were Democrats, others Republicans, Socialists, and Communists. Even after moving into the White House, Eleanor retained connections to the Village, ultimately purchasing an apartment in Washington Square where she lived during World War II and in the aftermath of Roosevelt’s death in 1945.

Including the major historical moments that served as a backdrop for Eleanor’s time in the Village, this remarkable work offers new insights into Eleanor’s transformation—emotionally, politically, and sexually—and provides us with the missing chapter in an extraordinary life.

A Mystery Quilt Block

One of the Clawson Quilting Sisters brought fifty quilt blocks that had belonged to her mother and which she has had for decades. She was hoping I could tell her something about them.

The blocks were machine pieced except for the y-seams which were hand pieced. The pink prints and white fabric are in good condition, silky, a good quality, and not at all brittle.

Because the fabrics were a fine quality, I did not believe they dated to the Depression Era, but perhaps late 20th c.

First, I checked out Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Blocks. There were blocks similar, but they had outer pieces and the star was positioned differently. My friend's blocks has the points of the star meeting the pieced while bar center.

I shared the photos to the Facebook group Quilts Antique and Vintage. And I searched online.

I found a block called the Road to Florida, or Florida.

The diagram below shows the pieced bars that look like my friend's blocks. But...the star points are differently placed.

Here is the block, called Florida. 

I was asked if the star were hand appliqued and positioned differently, but it is not.

One FB quilter suggested the block was Stars and Bars, and I found this example online. Still not exactly like my friend's quilt blocks.

Again, similar, with more quilt pieces and still with the star positioned differently.

I will keep looking.

Mini-Reviews: Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie/ I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith/Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

I listened to the audiobook of Home Fire by Kamia Shamsie which I purchased through Chirp. I congratulate the narrator for her clarity and her ability to voice the characters so clearly and elegantly.

The story begins when a British Muslim woman, Isma, is studying in America and runs into a man she knew about from home, the son of a man prominent in British politician who has dissociated himself from his Muslim heritage; he was also responsible for the death of her father who had become a jihadist. With the death of her mother, Isma raised her younger twin siblings Aneeka and Parvaiz. Now they are grown, she is finishing her studies.

Isma comes to like Eamonn, although his wealth and privilege has protected him. He is recalled to Britain where he meets the beautiful Aneeka, who makes use of his attraction to insinuate herself into his life. For she has need of power to bring her twin brother home after he was groomed and lured into the jihadist world.

A modern retelling of Antigone, the story is a wonderful exploration of family bonds versus the political and societal prejudices that force immigrants to choose between their cultural and religious heritage and assimilating into Western society.

Home Fire

by Kamila Shamsie

read by Tania Rodrigues

Penguin Random House

Release Date: August 15, 2017
Unabridged Audiobook $15.00

PUBLISHER DESCRIPTION

Longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize

The suspenseful and heartbreaking story of an immigrant family driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences

Isma is free. After years of watching out for her younger siblings in the wake of their mother’s death, she’s accepted an invitation from a mentor in America that allows her to resume a dream long deferred. But she can’t stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London, or their brother, Parvaiz, who’s disappeared in pursuit of his own dream, to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. When he resurfaces half a globe away, Isma’s worst fears are confirmed.

Then Eamonn enters the sisters’ lives. Son of a powerful political figure, he has his own birthright to live up to—or defy. Is he to be a chance at love? The means of Parvaiz’s salvation? Suddenly, two families’ fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined, in this searing novel that asks: What sacrifices will we make in the name of love?

*****

I have seen I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith mentioned as a favorite by many across social media. I picked up the 1948 edition at a library sale, and after seeing the movie based on it, decided I needed to read this book this winter as an anodyne to the anxiety of the pandemic.

The novel consists of journal entries by a young woman on the verge of womanhood who observes her family and her surroundings with great insight, with love, but also objectivity. She is able to dissect and identify the foibles of her family. Her self-awareness is quite remarkable as she struggles with her desires, her relationships, and even her faith (or lack of faith).

I think the intimacy of the novel allows so many readers to identify with the heroine. 

This is not a novel of big ideas or high adventure, twists, or thrills. It is human in scale.  Smith writes with an awareness of human frailty; her scenes of great amusement and humor do not diminish her characters. These are characters we care about. They are original, vivid, and conflicted. 

I can see why so many have enjoyed this novel. It certainly was a balm.

*****

The opposite of a comforting read is Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague by Maggie O'Farrell. The story of William Shakespeare's wife and family makes for the best kind of historical fiction, a literary gem that transports readers into another world that is  alien and yet very familiar, thanks to the depth of the characters.

O'Farrell imagines William meeting and falling in love with Agnes, a strange woman who practices herbal remedies and wanders alone through the fields and woods with her pet falcon. 

William's unhappiness with rural life inspires Agnes to suggest he expand his father's business in London, where he becomes involved with he theater. He supports his family and visits several times a year, while Agnes raises their children. 

O'Farrell follows the path of the plague across the world until it reaches Agnes's twin children. Hamnet's protectiveness of his twin leads to dire consequences. 

This story of grief is one more 2020 book whose timing was serendipitous. At a time when millions mourn, O'Farrell has given us a luminous story of grief.

Hamnet is a Top Ten Best Books of 2020 by the New York Times, and winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction.

I purchased a copy of the book.