This morning we went to the park. A nice big park, with a trail looping a lake, winding through lovely green woods. Still exploring our new neighborhood. It’s so fun finding new places to visit.
We didn’t walk far. Small children and pregnant women do not make for heroic expeditions. I’m still getting used to that. I have a hard time dampening that voice that wants to go a little further down the trail, see a little more. We saw geese with goslings and swans with cygnets, lots of dogs and bicycles and a girl on roller-blades, families with kids, joggers, fishermen, seagulls, rocks. Bella threw sticks in the water, Sophie toddled around and threw pebbles. We ate a picnic lunch. The weather was perfect, sunny and cool with a light breeze.
Of course there was no proper playground with swings and slides so we had to stop and let Bella play for a bit at the town playground near our house on the way home.
Ha! That’s one of the ones I ordered too from the Vine thing, but the only one I haven’t even started reading yet.
Alicia, Too funny. I guess we have similar tastes. It’s definitely worth reading. And I look forward to hearing about your reaction when you do get a chance to read it. It’s bugging me that I don’t have anyone to talk to about the ending. I have this nagging feeling that I might come around to liking it if only I could see it from a different angle.
How perfect then! I just got through the prologue tonight.
I finished reading it a few days ago. It was a beautifully written book – it felt like a memoir (I remember looking at the back cover and thinking “She’s too young to have written this book!”) which I think made the ending okay for me. But yes, there is a longing for something more.
It also seemed like there were a bunch of ideas just under the surface that I would have issues with. Was Michael’s Mom performing abortions? Why did M and G never get married? Was the thread about lying significant, or just an interesting character trait?
Anyway, I’m still processing it. Not entirely sure yet if I’ll review this one or let it be one of my percent I’m allowed to skip.
Thanks Alicia, I agree with your assessment of the beautiful writing. I did really enjoy the book up until I got to the last page and that ending.
Interesting questions about the underlying ideas. Certainly the worldview of the book was very secular and maybe that’s part of the something more I was longing for at the end, a moment of grace, reaching beyond the mess of ordinary life.
I thought the M and G non-marriage was actually an interesting way of developing the characters. It fit who they were and the deception they had both committed to really did go hand in hand. It would have been interesting had she dug a little deeper into the ways the lies about the marriage reflected the lies about G’s motherhood.
I suppose now that you bring it up that’s also a part of what troubled me at the end, perhaps what was lacking in the resolution was an acknowledgment of the extent of the damage those lies had done to the characters, to the family. It lacked a real sense of sin in that the characters’ various failures didn’t always have the consequences I thought they should have, if you know what I mean. Or Keane wasn’t interested in exploring the cause-effect relationship there. As you suggested, it seems more like an interesting character trait rather than something with deeper significance.