About this title: This novel chronicles the life of a Canadian woman, born in 1905 out of love and tragedy, and follows her life through marriage, motherhood and widowhood as she ages with the century.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
"I picked this book up on a whim and thought it was a wonderful read and thus was interested in the negative reviews of the book. I agree that main character, Daisy, (and I guess to some extent her mother) seems to be acted upon rather than acting throughout much of her life, but I think that might have been part of the point. Much of life is spent in mundane tasks and taking care of other people's needs rather than our own. Sometimes people seem to get lost in the hum-drum of day-to-day living.
I thought it was a great story about how we change at different points throughout our lives. Culver's change (spoiler alert) was fascinating, from never really talking or bonding, to being head-over-heels in love, to finding religion and building a tower, to becoming an orator and respected member of the community, to becoming a bit worn out.
There were a number of terrific lines in the book including, "It occurs to her that she should record this flash of insight in her journal-otherwise she is sure to forget, for she is someone who is always learning and forgetting and obliged to learn again..."
"No one told her so much of life was spent being old." and
"The larger loneliness of our lives evolves from our unwillingness to spend ourselves, stir ourselves. We are always damping down our inner weather, permitting ourselves the comforts of postponement, of rehearsals.""
""And Mercy Goodwill, the poor dear young soul, was lonely too - Mrs. Flett knows suddenly that this was true. She divines it. Never mind Mercy's secret hoard of tenderness and the soft words her young husband pours into her ear, never mind any of that. She and Mercy are alone in the world, two solitary souls, side by side in their separate houses, locked up with the same circle of anxious hunger."
"He likes to extend his very limbs, to feel himself grow taller, bigger, stronger as he moves closer to home, closer to the man he is about to become. A husband. A lover. He is awaited. This is an unlooked-for gift of happiness - to be awaited. He possesse a roof (rented to be sure but a roof none the less), and a supper table already set, and a wife he worships. Body and soul, he worships her."
"It has never been easy for me to understand the obiteration of time, to accpept, as others seem to do, the swelling abd corresponding shrinkage of seasons or the conscious acceptance that one year has ended, and another begun."
"For Cuyler Goodwill, a man untrained in conventional theology, the human and the divine are balanced across a dazzling equation: man's creation of God being exactly equal to God's creation of man, one unified mind bending like a snake around the durve of earth and heaven."
"This nostalgia of theirs is extraordinary, each of them feels the richness of it. On and o they'll tlk; a whle afternoon will disappear while they take turns comparing and repeating their separate and shared memories and shivering with pleasure every time a fresh fragment from the past is unearthed. Living with these old adventures is beautiful, they think."
"On the whole she believes old people are better off obsessed than emptied out."
"she has an compulsion to hold her far-flung family and friends in a tight embrace..."
"she feels a compulsion to rouse her aunt to debate. It seems to her this is the least the young can do for the old.""
"Forced to read this in my Canadian Lit post-1945 class, my mother rightly predicted that I would hate it. HATE. Magic realism on the prairies didn't work for me. Why? Because I'm from the Prairies. Full stop."
"This is one of those books that grabbed me from the first chapters, one of the few books that I described to Rob while I read it, as though I was giving him updates on a friend of ours. But somehow, it became less compelling as I read and really jumped the shark (nuked the fridge?), in Chapter 6: Work, a dreaded epistolary chapter.
Alice Walker pulled off an epistolary novel and the fellas who wrote the Bible certainly put it to good effect but mostly I just find it kind of tiresome in fiction.
Then came the chapter of everyone speculating about Daisy and why she's lost her noodle. It started to feel like a gimmick, like Carol Shields had just finished reading a chapter about point of view from an old college textbook.
I could nitpick my way into an obscenely long(er) review but I think the point is that all of this stuff annoyed me so much because it was otherwise such a great read. I loved the odd perspective of most of the story and the way Shields often skimmed over what are usually considered the milestones to tell the story from the perspective of life's details, the veal mold dinner and seasonal affection between the kids. I loved her use of language.
I finished it this morning but I have a feeling it's one of those books that I'll like more as time goes by..."
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