Sunday, December 31, 2023

The Year is Going

Something cozy and a little odd
to read on New Year' Eve.

If you can't locate a vintage copy such as this,
the story is also included in
Everyman's Christmas Stories

Companion volume to
Everyman's Christmas Poems.

Never the old year ends
but what you wish you had read more books!

I admit to slacking off toward the year's end,
but here are a couple of fun things that
I read between Thanksgiving and Christmas:

Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus

and

Banyan Moon
by Thao Thai

I love it when fate directs my reading, as it did one morning, a couple of months ago, when a facebook friend shared a deeply heartfelt and convincing recommendation for Lessons in Chemistry. That afternoon, I went to swim my laps, and there was someone sitting beside the pool reading it! Twice in one day -- a sign! I should have ordered a copy that very moment but delayed until the title came up at a dinner party a week or so later. I could wait no longer!

So glad I joined the crowd who are currently enjoying both the book and the mini-series. I am happy to give it my vote as most insightful novel of 2023.

I am classifying Lessons in Chemistry as a feminist manifesto, right up there with The Woman's Room (1977) by Marilyn French (1929 - 2009). I have re-read French's novel many times and can safely say that it was my introduction to the concept of feminism and has informed my thinking continually since the first time I read it. All these decades later, I'm putting Bonnie Garmus (b 1957) in the same category. She gets it! In fact, she gets what everyone should have got back in the 1970s but still has not! And, as my friend Liz asks, WHY NOT?!?!
The entire book is quote-worthy,
but here are a few favorite lines . . .
“Having a baby, Elizabeth realized, was a little like living with a visitor from a distant planet. There was a certain amount of give and take as the visitor learned your ways and you learned theirs, but gradually their ways faded and your ways stuck. Which she found regrettable. Because unlike adults, her visitor never tired of even the smallest discovery; always saw the magic in the extraordinary.”

' “I don’t have hopes,” Mad explained, studying the address. “I have faith.” He looked at her in surprise. “Well, that’s a funny word to hear coming from you.” “How come?” “Because,” he said, “well, you know. Religion is based on faith.” “But you realize,” she said carefully, as if not to embarrass him further, “that faith isn’t based on religion. Right?” '
"She knew being mad at him was unfair,
but grief is like that: arbitrary." (p 152)

. . . which in turn reminds me of
the observation in Banyan Moon that there is
"no point in holding grudges against the dead."

But, maybe there is.

******************

P.S.

More Marilyn French on my Blogs
FN ~ QK ~ KL
Also available for viewing:
The Women's Room & Lessons in Chemistry
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