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579.    The Island of Sea Women

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Nancy Sissom

Author:   Lisa See

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction, Foreign, World War II

374 pages, published March 5, 2019

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

Set on the Korean island of Jeju, The Island of Sea Women tells the story of Mi-ja and Young-sook, two young girls who work together as sea divers in their village’s all-female diving collective. The book covers the ups and downs of their relationship through the period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, World War II, the Korean War, until the modern era.

Quotes 

“They did this to me. They did that to me. A woman who thinks that way will never overcome her anger. You are not being punished for your anger. You’re being punished by your anger.”

 

“How do we fall in love? … How different it is with friendship. No one picks a friend for us. We come together by choice. We are not tied together through ceremony or the responsibility to create a son. We tie ourselves together through moment. The spark when we first meet. Laughter and tears shared. Secrets packed away to be treasured, hoarded, and protected. The wonder that someone can be so different from you and yet still understand your heart in a way no one else ever will.”

 

“To understand everything is to forgive.”

 

“Fall down eight times, stand up nine. For me, this saying is less about the dead paving the way for future generations than it is for the women of Jeju. We suffer and suffer and suffer, but we also keep getting up. We keep living. You would not be here if you weren’t brave. Now you need to be braver still.”

 

“The sea is better than a mother. You can love your mother, and she still might leave you. You can love or hate the sea, but it will always be there. Forever. The sea has been the center of her life. It has nurtured her and stolen from her, but it has never left.”

 

“You are not being punished for your anger. You’re being punished by your anger.”

 

“Her house is the nest where she hides the joy, laughter, sorrows, and regrets of her life.”

 

“Parents exist in children,” Grandmother said to bolster my confidence. “Your mother will always exist in you. She will give you strength wherever you go.”

 

“I’ve had to think about the dark shadow side of friendship. This is the person who knows and loves you best, which means she knows all the ways to hurt and betray you.”

 

“Who can name a death that was not tragic?” the speaker asks. “Is there a way for us to find meaning in the losses we’ve suffered? Who can say that one soul has a heavier grievance than another? We were all victims. We need to forgive each other.”

 

Remember? Yes. Forgive? No.”

 

“How can I help change things if I sit by and do nothing?”

 

“For a tree that has many branches, even a small breeze will shake some loose.”

 

“They did this to me. They did that to me. A woman who thinks that way will never overcome her anger. You are not being punished for your anger. You’re being punished by your anger.”

 

“And it confused me to think that the cloven-footed ones could have so many marvelous creations.”

 

“Every woman who enters the sea carries a coffin on her back,” she warned the gathering. “In this world, in the undersea world, we tow the burdens of a hard life. We are crossing between life and death every day.”

 

“As the eldest daughter, I had always been responsible for my younger siblings. Now I had to provide their food and clothing and be a second mother to them. My father was no help. He was a kind man, but he shuddered under the added responsibility. Too often I found him outside, alone with his sadness. No man was built to shoulder the full weight of feeding and caring for his family. That was why he had a wife and daughters.”

 

“You have been a good mother to your children, but now you must be an even better and stronger mother. Children are hope and joy. On land, you will be a mother. In the sea, you can be a grieving widow. Your tears will be added to the oceans of salty tears that wash in great waves across our planet. This I know. If you try to live, you can live on well.”

 

“Women live quietly,” I said. “However angry or broken a woman might get, she does not think about beating someone, does she?”

 

“If there is happiness at age three, it will last until you reach eighty.”

 

“I was a haenyeo—independent and resilient—but I’d missed my husband.”

 

“Confucius didn’t care much for women: When a girl, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son.”

 

“The saying You aren’t aware your clothes are getting wet in the rain suggests a gradual change and can be interpreted in two ways, one positive, the other negative. A positive story might involve friendship, which grows over time. First you are acquaintances, then friends, then a closer relationship develops, until you realize that you love each other. A darker example might be about a criminal. A person steals a small thing, then a larger thing, until finally he’s become a thief. The point is, you’re not aware just how wet you’re getting when the drizzle starts.”

 

“No one picks a friend for us; we come together by choice. We are not tied together through ceremony or the responsibility to create a son; we tie ourselves together through moments. The spark when we first meet. Laughter and tears shared. Secrets packed away to be treasured, hoarded, and protected. The wonder that someone can be so different from you and yet still understand your heart in a way no one else will.”

 

 “When the string breaks while working, there is still the rope. When the oars wear out, there is still the tree, ” she recited. “You feel you can’t go on, but you will.”

 

“You aren’t aware your clothes are getting wet in the rain.”

 

“No one picks a friend for us; we come together by choice.”

 

“A monument will never change how she feels. It’s unfair that victims should have to forgive those who raped, tortured, and killed, or burned villages to the ground. On an Island of World Peace, shouldn’t those who inflicted terrible harm on others be forced to confess and atone, and not make widows and mothers pay for stone monuments?”

 

My Take

I found The Island of Sea Women to be a fascinating piece of historical fiction.  I learned a lot about the Korean people, especially their suffering under the brutal Japanese occupation during the World War II era.  Author Lisa See brings this time period to life with a compelling tale of two best friends who belonged to an elite group of female divers who were torn apart by events and misunderstandings.  Well worth a read.

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573.    Long Walk to Freedom

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Nelson Mandela

Genre:   Non Fiction, Foreign, History, Memoir, Race

497 pages, published

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

Long Walk to Freedom is Nelson Mandela’s memoir for the first part of his life, from childhood, his years as a freedom fighter, his long years of imprisonment to finally his realease and election as Prime Minister of South Africa.

Quotes 

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”

 

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

 

“A leader. . .is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”

 

“A Nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it’s lowest ones”

 

“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

 

“I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.”

 

“Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.”

 

“Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.”

 

 “I have never cared very much for personal prizes. A person does not become a freedom fighter in the hope of winning awards.”

 

“Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”

 

“I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind.”

 

“A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.  At a point, one can only fight fire with fire”

 

 “I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me

 

“I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate. Even as a boy, I defeated my opponents without dishonoring them.”

 

“I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.”

 

“In another conversation I said, ‘Tell me the truth. When you were leaving prison after twenty-seven years and walking down that road to freedom, didn’t you hate them all over again?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely I did, because they’d imprisoned me for so long. I was abused. I didn’t get to see my children grow up. I lost my marriage and the best years of my life. I was angry. And I was afraid, because I had not been free in so long. But as I got closer to the car that would take me away, I realized that when I went through that gate, if I still hated them, they would still have me. I wanted to be free. And so I let it go.”

 

“As a leader, one must sometimes take actions that are unpopular, or whose results will not be known for years to come.”

 

“It was a useful reminder that all men, even the most seemingly cold-blooded, have a core of decency, and that if their heart is touched, they are capable of changing.”

 

“Like the gardener, a leader must take responsibility for what he cultivates; he must mind his work, try to repel enemies, preserve what can be preserved, and eliminate what cannot succeed.”

 

“life has a way of forcing decisions on those who vacillate.”

 

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.”

 

“Losing a sense of time is an easy way to lose one’s grip and even one’s sanity.”

 

My Take

My husband Scot and I listened to Long Walk to Freedom before a trip to South Africa.  Nelson Mandela is truly an inspirational figure with a compelling story to tell and much wisdom to impart.  During our trip, we were saddened to see that for most black South Africans their material conditions had not improved since Arpatheid was struck down with millions living in impoverished townships.  Mandela helped bring equality and democracy to a country separated by race.  Whether prosperity will flow to the poor of South Africa is an open question that will not be easily solved.

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571.    Cry the Beloved Country

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Alan Paton

Genre:   Fiction, Foreign, Historical Fiction

316 pages, published 1948

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic novel about South Africa during the Arpatheid period about Stephen Kumalo, a Zulu pastor, and his son, Absalom, who is charged with murdering a white man.

Quotes 

“The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.”

 

“But there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.”

 

“Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that’s the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.”

 

“ — This world is full of trouble, umfundisi.

— Who knows it better?

— Yet you believe?

Kumalo looked at him under the light of the lamp. I believe, he said, but I have learned that it is a secret. Pain and suffering, they are a secret. Kindness and love, they are a secret. But I have learned that kindness and love can pay for pain and suffering. There is my wife, and you, my friend, and these people who welcomed me, and the child who is so eager to be with us here in Ndotsheni – so in my suffering I can believe.

— I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering, umfundisi. For our Lord suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering. For he knew that there is no life without suffering.”

 

“Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey, but sorrow is at least an arrival.

When the storm threatens, a man is afraid for his house. But when the house is destroyed, there is something to do. About a storm he can do nothing, but he can rebuild a house.”

 

“The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.”

 

“The Judge does not make the law. It is people that make the law. Therefore if a law is unjust, and if the Judge judges according to the law, that is justice, even if it is not just.”

 

“For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing.”

 

“There is not much talking now. A silence falls upon them all. This is no time to talk of hedges and fields, or the beauties of any country. Sadness and fear and hate, how they well up in the heart and mind, whenever one opens pages of these messengers of doom. Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart.”

 

“We do not know, we do not know. We shall live from day to day, and put more locks on the doors, and get a fine fierce dog when the fine fierce bitch next door has pups, and hold on to our handbags more tenaciously; and the beauty of the trees by night, and the raptures of lovers under the stars, these things we shall forego. We shall forego the coming home drunken through the midnight streets, and the evening walk over the star-lit veld. We shall be careful, and knock this off our lives, and knock that off our lives, and hedge ourselves about with safety and precaution. And our lives will shrink, but they shall be the lives of superior beings; and we shall live with fear, but at least it will not be a fear of the unknown. And the conscience shall be thrust down; the light of life shall not be extinguished, but be put under a bushel, to be preserved for a generation that will live by it again, in some day not yet come; and how it will come, and when it will come, we shall not think about at all.”

 

“Who indeed knows the secret of the earthly pilgrimage? Who indeed knows why there can be comfort in a world of desolation? Now God be thanked that there is a beloved one who can lift up the heart in suffering, that one can play with a child in the face of such misery. Now God be thanked that the name of a hill is such music, that the name of a river can heal. Aye, even the name of a river that runs no more.

 

“because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie.”

 

“I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good for their country, come together to work for it.  I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.”

 

“It was not his habit to dwell on what might have been but what could never be.”

 

“And were your back as broad as heaven, and your purse full of gold, and did your compassion reach from here to hell itself, there is nothing you can do.”

 

“For mines are for men, not for money. And money is not something to go mad about, and throw your hat into the air for. Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children. Money is for security, and for dreams, and for hopes, and for purposes. Money is for buying the fruits of the earth, of the land where you were born.”

 

 “In the deserted harbour there is yet water that laps against the quays. In the dark and silent forest, there is a leaf that falls. Behind the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools.”

 

My Take

I read Cry, the Beloved Country just before a trip to South Africa with the hope of gaining insight into that country and its history of racial injustice.  It delivered this through the story of a black family coming to grips with the execution of their son after he kills a white man.   The book is written in a lyrical, poetic style that enhances its impact.

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568. The Rise of Athens: The Story of the World’s Greatest Civilization

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Anthony Everitt

Genre:   Non Fiction, Foreign, History

512 pages, published December 6, 2016

Reading Format:    on Hoopla

Summary

The Rise of Athens is a comprehensive overview of the rise of the tiny city-state of Athens in ancient Greece to become one of history’s most influential civilizations, inspiring Alexander the Great, the Romans, and America’s own Founding Fathers.  Author Anthony Everitt provides detailed, insightful portrayals of the different Athenians who contributed to the city’s rise: Themistocles, a brilliant naval strategist who led the Greeks to a decisive victory over their Persian enemies; Pericles, arguably the greatest Athenian statesman of them all; and the wily Alcibiades, who changed his political allegiance several times during the course of the Peloponnesian War–and died in a hail of assassins’ arrows.  He also covers many of the battles that defined the Hellenic world including Thermopylae, Marathon, and Salamis. An unparalleled storyteller, Everitt combines erudite, thoughtful historical analysis with stirring narrative set pieces that capture the colorful, dramatic, and exciting world of ancient Greece.

Quotes 

“For all the wonders of ancient Athens, or rather because of them, I faced a fundamental question. How was it that this tiny community of 200,000 souls or so (in other words, no more populous than, say, York in England or Little Rock in Arkansas) managed to give birth to towering geniuses across the range of human endeavor and to create one of the greatest civilizations in history? Indeed, it laid the foundations of our own contemporary intellectual universe.”

 

 “Let your motto be, I lead. Strive to be best.”

 

 “War is glorious and, at the same time, a great evil.”

 

“Religion was about ritual rather than belief.”

 

“It is as if nothing had ever happened on that bloodstained shore. Had Helen been worth it?”

 

My Take

I read The Rise of Athens in advance of a trip to Greece which included a three day stay in Athens.  While it gets weighted down in certain sections, on the whole the book provides a lot of interesting history and stories about Athens and Greece which really enhanced my trip.

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560. Red Island House

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Andrea Lee

Genre:   Fiction, Foreign, Race

288 pages, published March 23, 2021

Reading Format:  Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

Red Island House tells the story of Shay, an African American Literature Professor from Berkley, and her older, Italian husband Senna.  Senna builds Shay an idyllic beach house on the island of Madagascar.  Over several decades, we witness the rise and fall of Shay and Senna as they start and raise a family and then inevitably drift apart.

Quotes 

“Outsiders always want something from Madagascar. The emotion is always the same, whatever the thing desired: whether to establish the country as a locus for fabulous legends … as a source for gemstones, rare butterflies, rosewood, spices, slaves; or as fertile ground to produce sugar … or even – as Hitler once planned – as a convenient penal colony for the exiled Jews of Europe.”

 

My Take

While the book has a few interesting insights, I did not love Red Island House.  I never became invested in any of the characters and the plot was boring.

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559. One by One

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Ruth Ware

Genre:   Fiction, Suspense, Thriller, Crime, Mystery, Foreign

372 pages, published September 8, 2020

Reading Format:   Audio Book

Summary

Getting snowed in at a mountain chalet in the Swiss Alps is just the beginning of the problems facing the membes of the tech company Snoops who are there for a corporate retreat to decide whether or not to take a huge buyout offer.  Bigger problems ensue for them and the two Chalet employees when the murders start, one by one.

Quotes 

“I stop, thinking of Topher and his cushioned, monied existence–the way he has had everything handed to him on a plate, the way he’s never had to scrap for anything, never had to swallow a snub from a boss, or pick up a stranger’s dirty underwear, or do any of the myriad demeaning, boring jobs the rest of us take for granted.”

 

“They are arrogant, that’s what I realize–maybe not Liz and Carl quite so much, but all of them to some degree. They are protected by the magic of their shares and their status and their IP. They think that life can’t touch them–just like I used to do.”

 

“Only now it has. Now life has them by the throat. And it won’t let go.”

 

 “Behind him is a girl with fluffy yellow hair that cannot possibly be her real shade. It’s the color of buttercups and the texture of dandelion fluff.”

 

 “But it’s not just her body language that sets her apart—it’s everything. She’s the only one wearing clothes that look more H&M than D&G, and though she’s not the only one w

earing glasses, the others look like they’re wearing props provided by a Hollywood studio.”

 

My Take

One by One is a crackling thriller.  I had previously read her books In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10 and had really enjoyed them.  I liked One by One even more.  It was very  suspenseful and kept me guessing throughout.  The main character and Chalet Manager Erin is also well developed and gives the reader someone to identify with and root for.

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557. One Good Turn

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Kate Atkinson

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Foreign, Crime

418 pages, published September 10, 2007

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

One Good Turn takes place during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland when a near-homicidal attack occurs which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander – until he becomes a murder suspect.

Quotes 

“They said love made you strong, but in Louise’s opinion it made you weak. It corkscrewed into your heart and you couldn’t get it out again, not without ripping your heart to pieces.”

 

“Love was the hardest thing. Don’t let anyone ever tell you different.”

 

“Julia’s vocabulary was “chock-full” of strangely archaic words – “spiffing,” “crumbs,” “jeepers” – that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls’ annual rather than in Julia’s own life. For Jackson, words were functional, they helped you get to places and explain things. For Julia, they were freighted with inexplicable emotion.”

 

“You said five little words to someone–How can I help you?–and it was as if you’d mortgaged your soul out to them.”

 

“The Grim Reaper, Gloria corrected herself – if anyone deserved capital letters it was surely Death. Gloria would rather like to be the Grim Reaper. She wouldn’t necessarily be grim, she suspected she would be quite cheerful (Come along now, don’t make such a fuss).”

 

 

“Gloria regretted that she wasn’t a knitter, she could be producing a useful garment while waiting for Graham to die.”

 

“Boxes within boxes, dolls within dolls, worlds within worlds. Everything was connected. Everything in the whole world.”

 

“One of the things Jackson liked about Julia was her independence, one of the things he didn’t like about Julia was her independence.”

 

“Sometimes you wondered why anyone bothered crawling out of the cradle when what lay ahead was so darn difficult.”

 

 “No one ever warned you about how ferocious mother love could be, let’s face it, no one warned you about anything.”

 

My Take

While I’m a fan of some of Kate Atkinson’s books (Life After Life and A God in Ruins), other ones that I have read (Transcription and Behind the Scenes at the Museum) are a bit clunky.  You can put One Good Turn in the clunky category.  Actually, it is the most clunky Atkinson.  In this case, One Good Turn does not deserve another.  Skip.

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547. A Long Petal of the Sea

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Isabelle Allende

Genre:   Fiction, Foreign

336 pages, published January 21, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

A Long Petal of the Sea opens in Spain during the late 1930s.  The country is in the throes of the Spanish Civil War.  After General Franco and the Fascists overthrow the government, hundreds of thousands flee including Roser, a young widow who is pregnant and Victor,  an army doctor and the brother of the deceased father of her child.  To be permitted to immigrate to Chile under a program facilitated by the poet Pablo Neruda, the two marry and agree to raise Roser’s child together. Once in Chile which Neruda described as “the long petal of sea and wine and snow,” Roser and Victor face many hurdles, but ultimately thrive in their adopted country and each grow to love their accidental spouse.

Quotes 

“Pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional.”

 

“Nothing can grow in the shade of secrets, she would say, love needs light and space to flourish.”

 

“My heart is broken, he told himself. It was at that moment he understood the profound meaning of that common phrase: he thought he heard the sound of glass breaking and felt that the essence of his being was pouring out until he was empty, with no memory of the past, no awareness of the present, no hope for the future.”

 

“The deep Chile of the fascists had always been there, beneath the surface, just waiting to emerge. It was the triumph of the arrogant Right, the defeat of the people who believed in that utopian revolution.”

 

“So much hatred, so much cruelty . . . I don’t understand,’ said Victor. His mouth was dry and the ords stuck in his throat.  ‘We can all turn into savages if we’re given a rifle and an order,’ said another prisoner who had come over to them.”

 

“Humans are gregarious creatures, who are not programmed for solitude, but for giving and receiving.”

 

“All governments have forgotten the poor; that generates violence and sooner or later the

country will pay for that negligence,”

 

“If one lives long enough, the circles close.”

 

“The poet thought this was a splendid riposte, and so accepted him on board, together with fishermen, farm and factory workers, manual laborers, and intellectuals as well, despite instructions from his government to avoid anyone with ideas.”

 

“Maybe the war against this cancer is lost, but meanwhile we can win a few battles.”

― Isabel Allende, A Long Petal of the Sea

 

“Take note: If little by little you stop loving me, I’ll stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me Don’t come looking for me, I’ll already have forgotten you. —PABLO NERUDA

 

“He had always suspected that on her travels she had taken a lover, or perhaps even several, but the confirmation of this longstanding, serious love awoke in him retrospective jealousy that would have destroyed the happiness of the moment had Roser allowed it. With her implacable common sense, she showed him that she had not robbed him of anything to give to Aitor. She had not loved him any the less, because that love was always hidden in another chamber of her heart and didn’t interfere with the rest of her life.”

 

“For him equality was not only possible, but inevitable, and he practiced it as a religion.”

 

“My life has been a series of sailings, I have gone back and forth on this earth. I have been a foreigner without knowing that I had deep roots…”

 

“It made her feel sorry for her husband: she was discovering how vulnerable to flattery a conceited old man could be.”

 

“Without science, industry, and technology, no progress is possible, and without

music and art, there’s no soul,”

 

My Take

It has been a long while since I have read a book by author Isabelle Allende and it was a pleasure to revisit her writing.  While not her best work, A Long Petal of the Sea held enough insights, history and character development to make it more than a worthwhile read.

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539. The Searcher

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Tana French

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Foreign, Crime

451 pages, published October 6, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

The Searcher tells the story of retired detective Cal Hooper moves from Chicago to a remote village in rural Ireland with the intention to fix up the broken down cottage he’s bought, to walk the terrain, and to escape his former life.  His plans change when  he is pulled into helping a local boy who wants help in finding his missing brother.  Against his better judgment, Cal is once again acting the dectective.

Quotes 

“He appreciates mornings not for their effect on him, but for themselves. Even smack in the middle of a temperamental Chicago neighborhood, dawn sounds rose up with a startling delicacy, and the air had a lemony, clean-scoured tinge that made you breathe deeper and wider. Here, the first light spreads across the fields like something holy is happening, striking sparks off a million dewdrops and turning the spiderwebs on the hedge to rainbows; mist curls off the grass, and the first calls of birds and sheep seem to arc effortless miles. Whenever he can make himself, Cal gets up early and eats his breakfast sitting on his back step, enjoying the chill and the earthy tang of the air.”

 

 “Over the last few years it’s been brought home to him that the boundaries between morals, manners and etiquette, which have always seemed crystal-clear to him, may not look the same to everyone else. He hears talk about the immorality of young people nowadays, but it seems to him that Alyssa and Ben and their friends spend plenty of their time concentrating on right and wrong. The thing is that many of their most passionate moral stances, as far as Cal can see, have to do with what words you should and shouldn’t use for people, based on what problems they have, what race they are, or who they like to sleep with. While Cal agrees that you should call people whatever they prefer to be called, he considers this to be a question of basic manners, not of morals.”

 

“The mountains on the horizon look like someone took a pocketknife and sliced neat curves out of the star-thick sky, leaving empty blackness. Here and there, spread out, are the yellow rectangles of windows, tiny and valiant.”

 

“He feels that nineteen-year-olds, almost all of them, don’t have their feet on the ground. They’re turning loose from their families and they haven’t found anything else to moor themselves to; they blow like tumbleweed. They’re unknowns, to the people that used to know them inside out and to themselves.”

 

“The sky, dappled in subtle gradations of gray, goes on forever; so do the fields, coded in shades of green by their different uses, divided up by sprawling hedges, dry-stone walls and the odd narrow back road.”

 

“Landscape is one of the few things he knows of where the reality doesn’t let you down. The West of Ireland looked beautiful on the internet; from right smack in the middle of it, it looks even better. The air is rich as fruitcake, like you should do more with it than just breathe it; bite off a big mouthful, maybe, or rub handfuls of it over your face.”

 

“Trey says, with absolute bedrock certainty, “He wouldn’t do that.”

Cal reached the point a long time ago where those words make him tired for all of humanity. All the innocents say that, and believe it to the bone, right up until the moment when they can’t any more. My husband would never do that to our children, my baby ain’t no thief. Cal feels like he ought to stand on a street corner handing out warnings, little pieces of paper that just say: Anyone could do anything.”

 

“Etiquette is the stuff you gotta do just ’cause that’s how everyone else does it. Like holding your fork in your left hand, or saying ‘Bless you’ if someone sneezes. Manners is treating people with respect.”

“Everyone was talking about talking, and the most moral person was the one who yelled at the most other people for doing the talking all wrong.”

 

 “The wind combs the heather and gorse with a low ceaseless rustle. Its smell has a sweetness almost too cold to catch. The sky is a fine-grained gray, and from somewhere in its heights a bird sends down a pure wild whistling.”

 

 “The morning has turned lavishly beautiful. The autumn sun gave the greens of the fields an impossible, mythic radiance and transformed the back roads into light-muddled paths where a goblin with a fiddle, or a pretty maiden with a basket, could be waiting around every game and-bramble bend. Cal is in no mood to appreciate any of it. He feels like this specific beauty is central to the illusion that lulled him in stupidity, turned him into the peasant gazing slack-jawed at his hand full of gold coins till they melt into dead leaves in front of his eyes. If all this had happened in some depressing suburban clot of tract homes and ruler-measured lawns, he would have kept his wits about him.”

 

“He also can’t see any reason not to let himself sit there and think about Donna, seeing as he already fucked up and called her. Cal never had much time for nostalgia, but thinking about Donna seems like an important thing to do every now and then. EH sometimes gets the feeling that Donna has methodically erased all their good times from her memory, so that she can move on into her shiny new life without ripping herself up. If he doesn’t keep them in his, they’ll be gone like they never happened.”

 

 “I’ve only myself to please. There’s great freedom in that.”

 

My Take

Having read numerous books by the incredibly talented Irish writer Tana French, I was eagerly anticipating reading The Searcher.  While I found it to be a decent read, it doesn’t live up to her previous efforts.  There is not the same engagement with the characters and the central mystery feels mundane.

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535. The Ruin

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Joni Renee

Author:   Dervla McTiernan

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Foreign

380 pages, published July 3, 2018

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Hoopla

Summary

The Ruin (Book no. 1 in the Cormac Reilly series) opens with DI Cormac Reilly discovering the body of Hilaria Blake in her crumbling Georgian home, dead from a drug overdose, along with her two children, Maude and Jack.  Twenty years later, Aisling Conroy’s boyfriend Jack is found dead in a freezing river and the police conclude it was suicide. A surgical resident, Aisling suspects something is not quite right, especially after Jack’s sister Maude reappears in Ireland after a 20 year absence.  When  Cormac Reilly is assigned to re-investigate Hilaria’s accidental overdose, he also comes to suspect that things are not as they seem.

Quotes 

 

My Take

Having read and loved many books by the Irish writer Tana French, I was keen to check out Dervla McTiernan, a writer in the same vein.  I was not disappointed.  Her spot on character insights and sense of place enrich and deepen this crackling mystery.  I will continue to read her books and look forward to the second Cormac Reilly book.

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