An Invincible Summer - A Woman's Journey

I finally picked up my first Louise Erdrich book. I've heard all the hype. I am aware of all the awards but for some reason I resisted.  Then the spirit moved me and I got The Master Butchers Singing Club. The book is well written and has an interesting story. Her language is lush, characters flawed and she demands that we look at the complete person.  Even if I had not liked the book as a whole, the last chapter of the book is so stunningly beautiful that it would be worth the time spent. I had to read and reread it again and again. I would share it but, darn it, it's the last 3 or 4 paragraphs and it doesn't seem right to do so, just in case you decide to read it. If you are not a fan or uninterested, at least go to your local bookstore, pick it up and read the last 3 or 4 pages. You won't be sorry.

The Boy Scout is reading  to me again. I spoke of it earlier but am loving it so much that I'm bringing it up again. The Brothers K by David James Duncan has been around a long time. It is a beautiful story of a family from each members standpoint. It is loving, poignant and hilariously funny. As my man was reading yesterday he got to a part that was so touching that I asked him to read it again. The father, who had had a MLB pitching career at one time, but whose thumb has been mangled in a workplace accident, has set up an area in the yard that allows him to try to regain his pitching ability in privacy, or so he thinks. As he struggles to regain what had been, his sons are watching him, one with aching sadness, one with hope. Duncan writes:      But to my mind, hunching in that hedge stands out as the best thing I did that year, and one of the best things I've ever done, period. The dank laurel, the darkness and the need for low-voiced secrecy created an atmo...

Just finished A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving. How I’ve loved listening to my man read this out loud. How I have grown to love the strange voice that became Owen’s voice, always in ALL CAPS. As he finished the last few pages yesterday, I felt the melancholy of saying goodbye to a good friend. Never having read a single Irving book as a young woman, the pleasure of discovering a treasure trove of good reading has got me anticipating what I will delve into next. I’m told his later works lack some of the magical qualities woven into his early work. I read somewhere that the opening line of this book is Irving’s favorite. “I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mothers death, but because he was the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.” I confess myself thoroughly delighted. 

The Boy Scout finished reading the World According to Garp to me and I enjoyed it tremendously. What a writer! I can't pick out any particular sentences, or point to a paragraph that I think was a masterpiece, but I was amazed at the depth in which Irving could make me feel. One minute such grief that a couple of times I had to ask him to stop reading, then dread and disappointment with the characters, and then with such hilarity that the Boy Scout was unable to read through the spasms of laughter and tears rolling down his face. Irving seems to love his characters but allows them to be so very human. Cannot wait to start A Prayer for Owen Meany but we thought we would mix it up a bit. Now we are navigating Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. Thus far, I am finding it to be subtle and quiet with a poinency that aches. Family, love, revenge and faith.....the writing is simply lovely. “Once in my life I knew a grief so hard I could actually hear it inside, scraping at the ...