Finished: Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Hardy). Well, that was depressing. :-( That's my third Thomas Hardy book and the saddest to date. Tess Durbeyfield is a beautiful, virtuous, sixteen year old English village girl whose family barely makes ends meet. Her father drinks more than he supports Tess's mother and house full of children. When a passing clergyman tells the father that his name actually derives from an old entitled family full of knights and land and wealth, the D'Urbervilles, he becomes besotted with the idea that they will soon find some rich relatives and become rich and respectful. Tess's mother is also convinced and insists that Tess go to pay a visit to a neighboring town where she knows there are some D'Urbervilles. Tess doesn't like this idea until she feels responsible for the death of their only horse while making a delivery for her father. She feels terrible guilt, wonders what her family will do without the horse, so decides to go and meet the D'Urbervilles. In reality, the D'Urbervilles are truly an extinct family. The D'Urbervilles in the neighboring town are really a rich family called the Stokes. The father made his fortune off of being a collector of interest for those less fortunate, and so when he retired to the new town to build his mansion, he decided to look up an old, entitled, yet expired, family name and attach it to his last name. Hence, the rich relatives (who aren't really relatives) are the Stokes-D'Urbervilles.

As Tess makes her way there, the Stokes-D'Urberville patriarch has now passed away and only the blind mother and her roguish 24-year old son are left. The minute that Tess approaches the manor and comes upon the son, Alec D'Urberville, her life changes forever and not in a good way. Alec is handsome, charming, forward, sarcastic, etc. He has a laugh in his eye as Tess explains that she thinks they are related. He immediately begins calling her "Coz" and tells her he'll talk to his mother and he's sure he can find a position for her there. He knows very well that they aren't related since they are really Stokes. Tess is uncomfortable with his forwardness, especially when he insists on kissing her cheek. She goes home determined not to accept any position that may be offered there. However, by the time she gets back home a letter has already beat her home offering her a position living in a little cottage taking care of the estate fowls, which Alec's mother is very fond of. Tess's father is a bit insulted at the offer of employment as opposed to the embracing of Tess as a family member, but then he figures that will come in time. Tess's mother can only see wedding bells in Tess's future with the roguish young D'Urberville. Both parents pressure Tess to go, so she does.

Alec continues to be forward with Tess until one night he seduces her. The passage is very vague, and sounds more like rape to me, since it references Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece, "The adder hisses where the sweet bird sings; What virtue breeds iniquity devours." Four months later, Tess has insisted on returning home and is very cold to Alec. It is implied that their "relations" continued more than just the one time, though. Tess arrives home ashamed and knowing that her life and possibility of having a husband in the future are practically non-existent since she's been "ruined". Her mother can't believe that she had premarital relations with the young D'Urberville and has spoiled her changes and her name. Tess cries to her mother, why didn't you ever tell me about these things and what was right from wrong? How was I to know? She's only sixteen, after all. She also discovers that she's pregnant! Flash forward several months and Tess is working the fields trying to help support her family. She's got a very sickly baby boy, who takes a turn for the worse one night and dies. Tess spends a couple of years just going through the motions and helping her family. Finally, at the age of 20 she decides she does have a life ahead of her and sets off from home. She decides to go to another neighboring town and work as a dairy maid. She lives on the dairy farm and thrives in the environment, milking cows and working alongside the other dairy maids. Also working alongside the dairy maids is the handsome, 24 year old, outgoing son of a clergyman, Angel Clare, who has decided not to follow in the clergy footsteps of his father and two brothers. He wants to learn to be some type of farmer so he has arranged to have internships at various farms. He is now on his dairy farm internship. Of course, Angel falls in love with Tess and Tess with Angel.

When Angel proposes to Tess and asks her to come and be his wife on his future farm, Tess, knowing her "impure" history declines over and over. Can't they just be in love and not be married? Angel is so in love with Tess that he is very persistent. Tess tells him she needs to tell him about her history first, and he can't imagine anything that could be so terrible in his virtuous Tess. She's so in love with Angel, that she finally convinces herself that her past doesn't matter. They get married and Angel can't wait to introduce her to his family, who he knows will come to accept that he married "lower" because, after all, she does have the D'Urberville name in her lineage. Tess, still feeling very guilty, even tells him the morning of their wedding day that she really needs to tell him about her history before they marry. Angel puts her off and tells her they will discuss their history later after they're married. So...after the ceremony, Tess and Angel head to a little cottage mill for a few days. That very evening, before they have consummated their marriage, Angel first confesses to Tess that a few years back he had a 48 hour relationship with a woman, and never did it again. Can she possibly forgive that Tess will not be his first lover? Tess forgives him instantly and is actually excited...she has the same news. She tells Angel the whole story about what happened with Alec, the baby and everything. Angel becomes instantly withdrawn. I guess it was different for a woman to be impure as opposed to a man? Anyway, seeing his reaction, she begs him to forgive her. She says she doesn't blame him for not wanting her. Can't he see that she wanted to tell him before the marriage, she tried to tell him? She tells him if he cannot accept her that he can divorce her immediately. He says that would bring scandal on his family name. He doesn't know how he feels, but he knows that he can't stay with her at the moment. :-( Tess offers to go home to her family while he decides and he takes her up on that. He asks her not to contact him but to let him contact her. He sends her with some money so she won't be destitute. Tess, of course, is heartbroken.

Tess heads home with another failure on her hands. Angel heads to Brazil because he hears that there is farmland there. Fast forward another eight months and Tess has not heard from Angel. She is on the last legs of the money he gave her because she used most of it to help out her parents. She is nearly destitute and has gone to work on another farm as a hand to make ends meet. Angel has fallen sick with fever in Brazil almost as soon as he arrived. The supposed idyllic situation for farming in Brazil for the wooed foreigners is not as idyllic as was advertised. Over a year after their marriage, Tess has still not heard from Angel. One day, in the town near the farm she works, Tess runs into....duh, duh, duhhhhh....Alec D'Urberville. He is instantly smitten. He has grown and changed, he says, especially with the death of his mother. He also got religion. His religion doesn't last long, though, because he is instantly re-smitten with Tess and pursues her relentlessly. He apologizes for his former behavior and can't stand to see Tess working her fingers to the bone. He asks her to come and be his wife. He can make things right with their past relationship if she'll just marry him. He can take care of her and her family with all the money he has. Tess just wants him to go away! She tells him she is already married. He asks, then where is your husband who would let you work and live in these conditions?? Tess finally decides to write to Angel and she begs him to come home. She declares how much she loves him and says that if he doesn't come home there are other life choices she might have to make. But mostly, she adores him would die for him and please, please, please come home to her. Meanwhile in Brazil, Angel has recovered, but is weak. He has had lots of time to think and no question, he still loves Tess. Even a fellow Englishman who has come over to make his own fortune tells Angel that what Tess did in the past shouldn't be as important as her character and what she can become in the future. Angel has pretty much decided to forgive Tess and go home when he gets her letter. Of course, the letter took weeks and weeks to get to him in Brazil.

Meanwhile, Tess's worthless father finally passes away which forces her mother, brothers and sisters to leave their rental house and move somewhere. With nowhere to go, Alec D'Urberville again offers to Tess that she and her family can come and live in the cottage on his estate since he can't marry her. He'll even send her brothers and sisters to school. Still, Tess doesn't want to be beholding to him. Tess, her mother and family try moving to another little town, but the rooms they think they have rented are not available. Fast forward a few more months and Angel has finally come home. He got Tess's letter and sets off to find her. He is completely changed in appearance after his battle with illness and doesn't have the same vibrant spring in his step. He knows, though, that he loves Tess and just wants to find her and be with her. (Too little, too late if you ask me!) Angel finally tracks down Tess...but she's going by the name of Mrs. D'Urberville. She is living with  Alec in a lovely townhouse. When she comes down the stairs and sees Angel, she bursts out with emotion telling him he's too late, he's too late. Can't he see? She's back with the first person who despoiled her. She turns him out. Tess runs upstairs and cries in despair. However, Alec comes out of the bedroom and mocks her and mocks Angel. Soon, as Angel walks despairingly down the road back to home, he sees Tess come running after him. She catches up to him and tells him she's free to go with him....she's murdered Alec! Eek! Sure enough, with his taunting and after all the emotional trauma he caused to ruin her life, she has stabbed Alec in the heart and he is dead. Angel grabs Tess's hand and runs with her into the forest. They are able to travel for several days on small roads and take shelter in abandoned shacks. They renew their love and forgive each other everything. Finally, though, the law catches up with them and Tess is taken into custody. She begs Angel to go on with his life if anything happens to her. She asks him to marry her younger sister, who is virtuous and good and a near carbon copy of Tess. He promises to look after them. The last scene shows Angel and Tess's sister walking hand in hand away from the prison where a black flag has just been raised. The black flag signifies that someone has been put to death. Tess has gone to her maker. :-( Angel and Tess's sister walk off hand in hand.

Isn't that tragic and sad?? Tess was such a good, lively young lady and conscientious daughter when the story started out. Through no fault of her own, her life was ruined! The writing in the book is good, though, I was just so hoping for a happy ending! I never dreamed that Angel would really leave her and not come back for so long. They were truly in love. Oh well....sigh.

Finished: The Wind in the Willows (Grahame). Fun, imaginative book. Oh, that naughty Mr. Toad! :-) I probably never would have picked up this book to read except that it was on the top 100 books list...and...my husband's wonderful Aunt Barbara, authoress and teacher of English, sent this book to our children when they were tots. I'm pretty sure Earl read it to them over a time period. I, though, had never read it. Anyway....it was a nice respite from the drama and tragedy of all the books I've been reading to just read a delightful, imaginative, whimsical tale about friends Mole, River Rat, Otter, the formidable Mr. Badger, and the very naughty Mr. Toad! I actually laughed out loud and said "no, Mr. Toad!" a couple of times, lol.  :-)  OK, back to the drama....

Finished: Gone With The Wind (Mitchell). Oh, I loved this book! It becomes an instant favorite. Such a sweeping, detailed tale of love, loss, determination, tragedy, despair, courage, character, selfishness, selflessness, history, pride, greed, survival and grace. All those things wrapped into one. With the heartbreaking tragedy of the Civil War as the backdrop, the main characters are stripped bare and shown what they were made of. All my life as a young girl I loved, LOVED, Ashley...Ashley...said in that southern drawl. I guess I was like Scarlett, thinking he was the epitome of the southern gentleman who I could idealize. I could see how Scarlett would be so in love with him, and Melly too. All that based on a movie I saw years ago. Then, reading the book, I see that he was such a weak person. That doesn't totally change my opinion of him, but if he was truly so honorable, would he have been so torn between Melly and Scarlett all those years? I mean, who couldn't help but love Melanie Hamilton Wilkes? She will always be one of my favorite characters in movie or book. But Ashley Wilkes isn't really the end all be all that I always thought. No, after reading Gone With The Wind, I have to say that I adore Rhett Butler! If only his pride had let him tell Scarlett early on that he loved her. If only Scarlett could have realized much sooner that she loved him. How heartbreaking for her to realize, finally, at the end of the book...after beloved Melly has died, that she'd loved Rhett for years! That her love for Ashley was really a love based on her not being able to snare Ashley like she had all the other men. That Ashley was weak...a representation of a lost, genteel world...another person she'd just have to take care of.

Another aspect of the book which was lost on me so many years ago was the devotion and love of the servants like Mammy, Pork and Old Pete for their owners, and vice verse. I know that just typing that sentence sounds disgusting. I could never, would never, and have never condoned slavery. I can't imagine one human being owning another. The book is exploring a time period, though. A time when this was the norm in the south. A time when these people didn't know differently. And by these people I mean the youngsters like Scarlett O'Hara. She was born into the world where a large black woman, Mammy, took care of her practically more than her mother did. Mammy fixed her scrapes, fed her food, dressed her, tended her. If a baby was born to a mother who "had no milk", it was not uncommon for one of the black house servants to nurse the baby. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the people like Scarlett loved and adored and respected their Mammy's. They weren't prejudiced against them. They weren't derogatory to them. I'm not trying to make a controversial statement at all. And, I know I'm basing that on that on this one book. And, that's all I'm meaning here. To see that Mammy, Pork, Old Pete, Prissy, Dilcey and more stayed with their previous owners even after the war was over and they were free was such a huge statement. They loved their former owners and, in addition, were treated with scorn and hypocrisy by their "saviours" from the north. One scene that hits home from the book is when one of the Yankee women who has moved into Atlanta after the war is asking Scarlett's advice about getting a nanny for her children. When Scarlett suggests a black nanny, the northern woman is horrified. She won't have any black person being near her child, much less being her nursemaid. Scarlett is taken aback..."but you freed the black folks??" She doesn't understand how they can feel that way....how they can be the ones who are actually prejudiced against a race of people that they really know nothing about. Of course, on the flip side...there were those slaves who were not taken into the bosom of the family. They were the field slaves. These slaves were categorized in such a lower category and belonged down in the lower class like the "white trash". The O'Hara's didn't mistreat their slaves with beatings, but I know the historical horror stories show that many, many human beings were degraded, whipped, and treated like animals as they were just slave labor to their owners. I'm not sure I have a point here except to say that it took me being an adult to read this story and see that, perhaps many of the people who were freed by the ending of the Civil War stayed on with the families they'd been with for years because they WERE family to them.

Speaking of the war....what heartbreaking, candid descriptions of the horrible conditions of war that these young men went through. The loss of life was just astounding. My heart was beating as hard as Scarlett's and Melly's when then casualty lists started coming in! I knew, of course, that Ashley survived...but reading as Scarlett read down the list and when she got to the heartbreaking fact that all four of the Tarleton sons had been killed, it just broke my heart! Two of the sons, the red-headed twins, were the boys she grew up with who catered to her on the porch in the opening scenes of the movie and book. The book went into so much more detail about those boys, and about each of the families affected. I'll never, ever fathom the atrocities of war. I understand that the southerners were fighting for The Cause...but what a worthless cause. Not to them at the time, I know...but to see in through the eyes of history, how horrific. And, the aftermath with the reconstruction and the corrupt governing of Georgia (where the book took place), the horrible way the ignorant, illiterate, "freed black folks" (I just can't type the n-word that they used) were used by the northern government to maintain their iron grip on the southerners trying to rebuild. It was all just awful. An awful tragedy.

And, above it all rose the main characters...well, most of them. First of all Katie Scarlett O'Hara...the willful, strong, independent, passionate, selfish daughter of a fiery Irishman, and a true genteel southern lady. I've always thought that Scarlett was so incredibly selfish. I never knew that at the start of the story Scarlett was only 16 years old!! I could forgive her behavior and feelings just a little bit more knowing that by the time she had married her first husband (a friend's stolen beau), lost him to the war 2 months later, and was a young widow with a baby, she was only 17! Of course, by that age you should know right from wrong, but again, she was brought up the way she was brought up.....a spoiled, pampered girl who never did anything for herself and never took no for an answer! She was used to being the center of attention and having every boy fall in love with her. When Ashley Wilkes resisted his feelings for Scarlett and married Melanie, that began her lifelong yearning and desire for Ashley that would ruin her relationship with Rhett. I say lifelong, but Scarlett is only 28 when the story ends!! And, as the war rages on and finally affects Atlanta, where she's been living with her late-husband's relatives, Scarlett goes from 17 to 19 and shows a strength and courage that most adults don't have for years and years, if ever. In the face of Atlanta burning down around her, she stays with Melly and delivers her baby for her. Determined to get back home to the family plantation, Tara, she sends for Rhett, and with his help in a rickety old wagon, with a near dead horse, she gets them back to Tara. She may complain and be selfish while she's doing it. She make think hateful thoughts of Melly...but she still does it. She doesn't leave her behind. She may be doing it for her precious Ashley, but she still does it. She forms a bond between herself and Melly that she won't realize until Melly's deathbed was one of the most important bonds of her life.

And speaking of Melanie....could there be a more respected, determined, loyal, loving character? Her quiet strength in the face of the hardships is so admirable. Her faith in people more so. She's very fragile and never fully recovers from the birth of her boy, Beau, but she shows so much strength, some physical, but mostly mental, throughout the book. She becomes the pillar for everyone to draw strength from. She has the respect of the community. In essence, she is the younger version of the Scarlett's own selfless mother. Everyone falls in love with Melanie for her own nature. Even the swarthy Rhett Butler thinks she's the most magnificent woman and treats her gently and with the utmost respect. Melanie remains loyal to her "sister" Scarlett (Scarlett's first husband was Melanie's brother), throughout the entire book. She will never forget that Scarlett didn't leave her behind...that she saved Melly and her baby...and that once at Tara, Scarlett worked her fingers to the bone to keep Tara from going under and to keep their rag-tag family from going hungry. Scarlett spends all her life jealous that Melanie has Ashley, while Scarlett just knows that Ashley loves her (Scarlett). When Melly finally dies at the end of the book, Scarlett realizes that she didn't hate Melanie all those years, but truly loved her. She realizes that Ashley truly did love Melanie and will be lost without her...that Melanie was his backbone. While she may have been Ashley's backbone, she had become Scarlett's heart and touchstone of goodness. Her death is a heartbreaking and eye-opening event for all. Just as it makes Scarlett realize that she truly loves Rhett and not Ashley...it's too late. Rhett has finally had enough and he doesn't love Scarlett any more.

Speaking of Rhett, what a scamp, but what a man! You can see his goodness, much the way Melanie can see right through his rough exterior to the goodness...but Scarlett rarely sees that! She's so self-centered and determined to make money and never be hungry again, that she attributes most of Rhett's actions to selfish motivation and not love for her. Rhett is a swarthy, handsome, intelligent, independent, opinionated, stubborn man. He doesn't believe in the war, and so he won't fight in it. Instead, he makes tons of money running illegal blockades and selling the much coveted cotton of the south to the English at skyrocketing prices. He runs his boats in and out of Georgia until he makes enough money and the Yankee blockades become too tight and dangerous to go through. Rhett and Ashley have one thing in common....they both don't believe in the ideals of the war and that they should be going to war. However, Ashley does the "honorable" thing and goes to fight. Rhett does the practical thing and does not. Ashley isn't strong enough to stand up for his convictions. Of course, towards the end of the war, Rhett does enlist when his conscience finally gets the better of him. He falls in love with Scarlett the first time he sees her....when he mistakenly overhears her declaration of love for Ashley on the day that Ashley and Melanie become engaged at the last big ball before the war breaks out. He loves her fire and outspokenness, but he always hates and resents that she loves Ashley through all her hardships. When Scarlett and Rhett finally marry, you can tell that he's just longing for her to realize that she loves HIM. However, if he could just show a little less pride and sarcasm, there are a few times that Scarlett is on the verge of confessing her growing feelings for him. But alas, Rhett always runs away and never lets her know how he's feeling. He does save the day several times, though, including saving Ashley and several other men from being arrested and hung by the Yankees! After Scarlett gives birth to their daughter, Bonnie, Rhett is a changed man...devoted to his daughter, but more and more estranged from Scarlett because he believes an ill-fated meeting between Scarlett and Ashley was them having an "affair", when actually, it was an embrace of friendship. Scarlett was beginning to see that she didn't truly love Ashley, she just didn't know it yet. Unfortunately her embrace was witnessed by others and the already much maligned and disrespected Scarlett became even more so, and particularly by Rhett, who had always tried to give her the benefit of doubt, and the benefit of his hope that she'd grow to love him. When beloved Bonnie is killed in a horse riding accident at a very young age, that is the final undoing of Rhett. When Melly passes away not much long after, that seals the deal. Rhett says he no longer loves Scarlett and he's leaving. He tells her she's finally free to go be with Ashley. But Scarlett cries out to Rhett that she loves him! Don't you see? I don't love Ashley, I love you Rhett! But, for Rhett it's too little, too late. He walks out of Scarlett's life and leaves her to once again push her worries to tomorrow. As Scarlett asks Rhett what she'll do without him, Rhett's last lines to Scarlett:

   "Scarlett, I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken---and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived. Perhaps, if I were younger---" he sighed. "but I'm too old to believe in such sentimentalities as clean slates and starting all over. I'm too old to shoulder the burden of constant lies that go with living in polite disillusionment. I couldn't live with you and lie to you and I certainly couldn't lie to myself. I can't even lie to you now. I wish I could care what you do or where you go, but I can't."
   He drew a short breath and said lightly but softly: "My dear, I don't give a damn."
  She silently watched him go up the stairs, feeling that she would strangle at the pain in her throat.

And then Scarlett's last lines of the book as she picks herself back up and knows she'll have to go on without Rhett:

    "I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day."

Perhaps if Margaret Mitchell hadn't died before she was 50, she may have written a sequel to her Pulitzer Prize winning novel and we could have seen if she intended for Rhett and Scarlett to ever find their way back together. Or, perhaps she would have left it as is. Either way, I loved this book and the depth of emotions it has made me feel about so many things. It's one of those books that I didn't want to end! A few passages I liked...

The opening two paragraphs of the book hooked me...the first introduction of Scarlett. Oh, by the way, when Margaret Mitchell wrote the book, Scarlett's name was Pansy O'Hara!! As she was getting the book published, the stronger name was suggested and needed. So...the opening paragraphs..

Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against the hot Georgia suns.
   Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her father's plantation, that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty picture. Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atalanta. The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the tightly fitting basque showed breasts well matured for her sixteen years. But for all the modestly of her spreading skirts, the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed. The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners had been imposed upon her by her mother's genteel admonitions and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own. 

I just love that description of Scarlett. :-)

When Scarlett furiously meets Rhett for the first time as he accidentally eavesdrops on her declaration of love for the betrothed Ashley:

"Sir," she said, "you are no gentleman!"

"An apt observation," he answered airily. "And, you, Miss, are no lady". 

hee hee, I love that one. That becomes the epitome of their relationship.

When Scarlett fights her way back to Tara and sees all the burned down mansions of her neighbors she is horrified and wonders if Sherman's burning march through Georgia has also destroyed her beloved Tara.:

Was Tara still standing? Or was Tara also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia?

One of Rhett and Scarlett's many frank conversations:

   "I'm surprised at you, Scarlett, for sprouting a conscience this late in life. Opportunists like you shouldn't have them." 
   "What is an oppor--what did you call it?"
   "A person who takes advantage of opportunities."
   "Is that wrong?"
   "It has always been held in disrepute--especially by those who had the same opportunities and didn't take them."

Sigh...what to read next?

Finished: The Confession (Grisham). Good Grisham book, but nail biting and sad. :-(  I thought I'd bring myself into the 21st century with a Grisham book. His The Firm was one of my favorite books. I can't call this one one of my favorites, but it certainly kept me turning the pages anxious to see how things turned out. Then, wow, I wasn't expecting what happened 2/3 of the way through the book. The Confession is the story of, Donte Drumme, a young black man and former football star who is on death row in Texas for the rape and murder of Nicole, his 17 year old cheer leading high school classmate. Nine years ago he was bullied and browbeaten into giving a confession to the murder using  horribly backhanded tactics by the police detective. Even though he recanted the next day, the courts took him at his first word. No matter of appeals worked throughout the years despite his dogged, go-getter defense attorney. Also, the ex-boyfriend of Nicole convinced himself that Donte had been seeing Nicole and so he lied to the police, and during the trial, that he saw Donte's van stalking the mall parking lot from which Nicole disappeared. Even though her body was never found, so hence no solid evidence that there was even a murder, Donte was still sentenced to death. Fast forward to current times and 27 year old Donte is only four days from being executed.

Keith, a young Lutheran minister in Kansas with a wife and young boys gets a visit at his church office from a ragged, limping, sickly looking man with a cane, Travis Boyette. Travis Boyette confesses to Keith that he just got out of prison on rape and sexual assault charges. He's on parole in Kansas. He's been in and out of prison for years and worked all over the place in his rough 44 years. He's got an inoperable stage four glioblastoma brain tumor (that's the super nasty kind), and he doesn't have long to live. He's there to tell the preacher that the young man about to be executed in Texas is innocent. Donte didn't commit the crime....he did. He's got nothing to lose by coming forward now. The problem is, he's very flaky and he keeps disappearing every few hours. His tale of the abduction, rape, murder and burial of Nicole is chilling. Keith tries to get in touch with the defense attorney down in Texas, but things are going wild in that small town as the execution approaches. They're also working on the now alcoholic ex-boyfriend of Nicole's and still trying to get him to recant his testimony. They're trying any and everything to get some kind of stay of execution. The governor is execution happy and it will take something big for him to give any kind of reprieve.

With only one day left until Donte's execution, Keith decides (after researching the Internet relentlessly) that Travis is telling the truth. Keith piles Travis into his little car and determines to drive him to Texas to confess to the defense attorney in person. Of course, this means Keith will be helping Travis break parole by crossing state lines. Finally, with only about three hours to spare, Travis confesses all to Donte's lawyer. He even has Nicole's class ring on a chain around his neck. He can take them to where he buried her body, but it's five hours away. Donte's lawyers file emergency stay papers but they are denied by the Texas last minute appeal court...and by the Governor!! No one believes the crazy old man. Then, an hour before the execution the ex-boyfriend finally recants his trial testimony in an affidavit. The defense lawyers rush those to the same courts and the governor. Again...those emergency appeals are denied. :-( Finally, Travis goes to the press about a half an hour before the execution. Finally the governor sees for himself the confession of the "crazy" man and the controversy it is stirring up. One of his close advisers tells him he should give a 30 day stay, even a 24 hour stay, just to hear this out. Another adviser thinks he should not. The governor, in such a cold statement, declares that Donte had a fair trial and no reprieve will be granted. He will be executed. No Reprieve! :-( :-( In a horribly sad scene, Donte says a finally goodbye to his family and he is put to death by intravenous drugs in the Texas death chamber.

The very next day the defense lawyer travels with Travis, the preacher and a film crew to the spot where Travis says he buried Nicole. He describes the metal box he put her in, what they'll find in the box, how the belt will be around her neck, how her id and credit card are in there...and he even knows the combination to the lock on the metal box. Sure enough, it's all as he says. The crime scene is turned over to the authorities and the defense attorney goes to work in the press condemning everyone from the detective to the prosecutor to the justice system and even sues the governor. It is heartbreaking for the family to get this news one day too late. :-(  And, Travis Boyette is no good person. He's very scummy and is constantly making comments to the preacher about his "cute" wife. Then, Travis has a huge seizure. They take him to the hospital where he appears to be in really bad shape....until he escapes out a back door and leaves his cane on the bed. Now Preacher Keith is devastated that he's responsible for this loose criminal. Will he attack another girl? Creepy Travis calls Keith and tells him that he's had the brain tumor for years and it's really benign. He doesn't really need the cane. See ya around, preacher. Oh yeah, and he also just wanted to lead them to Nicole's body so he could "see her" one more time. Fortunately, when Travis tries to kidnap another young lady from a mall parking lot, a semi-napping husband waiting in a nearby car sees the attempted abduction and throws his truck into gear, smashing into the car. He bashes Travis in the head with a baseball bat, and Travis finally ends up behind bars. Most of the people involved in putting Donte behind bars end up resigning in shame. The governor, though, keeps on keepin' on.

The book deals with the race relations in the small Texas town as the blacks and whites riot against each other, burn down each other's churches...and...gasp...when all the black football players on the high school team walk out and refuse to play Friday night's game in solidarity with Donte, the town council just doesn't know what to do! Anyway...a good book, and such a strong statement in opposition of the death penalty. Wow, if even one innocent person is put to death, what a travesty. I grew up in Texas,  and I've actually always believed in the death penalty. Reading a horror story like that, though, makes me wonder if that has happened or could happen in real life. Time to rethink some big issues.

Finished: The French Lieutenant's Woman (Fowles). A pretty good book at times, but basically the story of an engaged young man who cheats on his fiance, leaves her for another woman, who then rejects him...ruining his life. Of course, it's set in Victorian England, the 1860's, as the author pounds into the reader's head with several jolting asides that break from the story, and break the 4th dimension, or whatever you call it, and speak to the reader about theories of the time...and how he may or may not take the characters down certain paths. I can't say that I liked that part of the book atall. Anyway, The French Lieutenant's Woman is the story of Charles, a 32 year old English "gentleman" who is betrothed to the 21 year old, beautiful, rich, only child, Ernestina. They appear to have a witty, loving relationship and both look forward to the marriage until...duh duh duhhhhh...they come across the woman known to the town as "Tragedy", i.e., The French Lieutenant's woman. She stands cloaked in black, looking tragically out to sea at the edge of the Cobb, a huge, curved seawall in Lyme that juts out into the bay. Charles is instantly mesmerized by her, and seeks to find out about her. Her name is Sarah and, as the doctor puts it, she's been diagnosed with melancholia. She's been known to wander here, there and everywhere by herself, looking as if she's doing penance for some transgression. The story is that she is not of their same class, but of the lower class, but has an education. She lived with her father and one day three French sailors were washed ashore near her town after their ship crashed. She nursed the French Lieutenant back to health and they fell in love. She broke all social and ethical rules and followed him to the port town where he would sail from after he was healthy and they had an affair before he returned to France. He promised to return for her, but never did. Hence, she is always looking out to sea for him in her state of melancholia. I like that word. :-)

The true story ends up being much more sordid. Charles encounters her one day while he's out on a walk collecting artifacts (he's a paleontologist), and again, he is moved by her. Knowing it would be improper to be seen alone, the encounter is awkward...especially since he finds her sleeping on a small ridge overlooking a dangerous cliff. She begs him to return one of the next few days and she will explain the true story of her past. He does. She basically tells the same story we have heard, except she utters that famous line that is the only thing I remember from Meryl Streep in the movie...."I was the French Lieutenant's whore!" She says that she indeed followed the Lieutenant to the port town, but realized she didn't truly love him, but still "gave herself to him". She also tells Charles how she has since had a letter in which the Lieutenant told her he had married. She walks her lonely paths in constant shame and has sentenced herself to an unhappy life. She knows she's got Charles very interested, though. She pulls all his strings and he meets her again one day and they kiss! He is furious with himself and vows to forget her. He loves Ernestina, but on more of a superficial level. She's not at all a deep person as he perceives Sarah to be.

The bottom lines is...Sarah manipulates Charles into such a compromising position that he completely loses sight of his love for Ernestina. Of course, he didn't have a very determined sense of morality if he could be so easily manipulated! He insists that Sarah leave town and go to Exeter before the town strings her up for her unseemly behavior. She does appear to love Charles, so she goes. He doesn't even want to know where she is, but she sends him a letter with just her address written on it. She knows he'll come. Then he can't help himself and he stops there after a trip back home. He finds her and they have a passionate moment. As the author so eloquently puts, it takes him 90 seconds to rip her clothes off and ejaculate into her, lol. This is after, of course, they have a few moments of talking and longing looks back and forth. It is then when Charles discovers the horror of blood on his shirt. He realizes that she was a virgin!! She made the whole story about sleeping with the French Lieutenant up! She did fall for him, but he didn't fall for her. She did follow him to the little port town, but he didn't see her as she watched him leave with another woman. She made the whole story up to manipulate Charles into feeling sympathy for her and  loving her. Charles is dumbfounded and leaves. He had declared his love for her, and now this. He gets to his hotel and rethinks things. He writes her a letter and says he should have taken her in his arms and said "who cares!? I love you". He sends her a brooch and says that if his manservant, Sam, doesn't return with the brooch that he'll know she kept it. He'll take that as a sign that she loves him too and he'll go to break off his engagement and be back the next day. Sam, who realizes that his own future rides on Charles and Ernestina actually getting married, never delivers the letter. Charles doesn't know this. When the brooch is not returned (since she never got it), Charles goes the next day and completely humiliates himself and Ernestina by breaking off their engagement. Ernestina is devastated, and her father beside himself.

Charles feels bad, but he feels even worse when he gets back to the hotel where Sarah was staying and she's gone! She left no word...only that she'd taken a train to London. She never knew that Charles was coming back for her and assumed he went on to marry Ernestina. Charles searches high and low in London for Sarah to no avail. And, to cement his humiliation and low-lifedness, Ernestina's father makes Charles sign a declaration, as was done in the Victorian days apparently, stating that he entered into the contract of engagement and then broke it by having an illicit relationship. He can never call himself a gentleman again.

Charles spends several months, with detectives and all, searching for Sarah. He finally gives up hope and goes abroad for over a year. Two years after all the fateful events, Sam, who has married his fellow servant, Mary, sees Sarah going into a house in London. Sam, of course, no longer works for Charles since he betrayed him. Sam had also betrayed Charles by becoming a first hand witness of his affair for Ernestina's father. Anyway...for some reason, Sam has a minor spark of consciousness and sends an anonymous letter to Charles' solicitor with Sarah's new address. Charles, meanwhile, has been in America exploring around for a few months. Upon receiving his solicitor's telegram, Charles immediately sails back to London and goes to see Sarah. She's happier than he has seen her before. Here the author gets really weird...he gives two different endings. He has Sarah living in a mini-commune with some famous artist of the time and his sister. She's happy because she's his assistant. Charles begs her to marry him, but she refuses. She wants to maintain her independence. As a matter of fact, she'd seen his pleas in the newspapers looking for her, and ignored them. He accuses her of never loving him and ruining his life on purpose. In ending number one, she stops him and tells him there's someone she wants him to meet. It ends up, she's got a baby daughter that is his! She needed to know for sure he loved her before she let him know. They look like they'll live happily ever after. In the second ending, he gives his furious speech and storms out and she doesn't stop him. He goes to the river and some small kernel of survival grows in him and he knows he'll continue on with his life. Kind of a weird ending, but it is what it is.

In all, the book is just a very sad tale of this man who throws away everything for the grass on the other side of the fence, only to find out it's not greener at all, but a pretty psycho weed if you ask me. The writing was good, but as I said, I didn't enjoy the asides where he broke the stride of the novel to pontificate on other things. Here is the passage with the infamous "whore" line. :-)

    "Mr. Smithson, what I beg you to understand is not that I did this shameful thing, but why I did it. Why I sacrificed a woman's most precious possession for the transient gratification of a man I did not love." She raised her hands to her cheeks. "I did it so that I should never be the same again. I did it so that people should point at me, should say, there walks the French Lieutenant's Whore---oh yes, let the word be said. So that they should know I have suffered, and suffer, as others suffer in every town and village in this land. I could not marry that man. So I married shame."

Finished: Buddenbrooks (Mann). Oh, what a sad but good book! I may have a new addition to my favorite books, and it's been awhile since I added one of those! Buddenbrooks is the story of four generations of an upper crust German family. Starting in 1835, it tells the tale of the how the grandfather, Johann Buddenbrook, a well-to-do merchant who owns the family company, Johann Buddenbrook, is surrounded by his son, Jean and Jean's young family, Thomas, 9, Antoinette, 8, and young Christian, 7. Each of the children has certain expectations put upon them. Their father, Jean, first of all, takes over the company and inherits the position of Consul in the northern German town when his father dies. The company is doing well and the entire family has moved into a huge mansion as the story opens. Once patriarch Johann passes on and Jean takes over, the business continues to thrive, but all the children are raised to know their duties. Thomas, the oldest son, must follow in his father's footsteps and run the family business. Christian, who is flighty, and a bit of a hypochondriac, is not expected to live up to anything, and so he doesn't. Tony, as Antoinette is called, is expected to marry a man that will bring more income to the family. Despite the fact that she falls in love with a person of lower status, Tony does what's required of her and marries a man who actually ends up swindling the family! He snows Jean and his wife, Elisabeth, with his flattery, so much so that they relentlessly push Tony to marry him...despite him being much older and despite the fact that she can see right through his fakeness! He has enlisted people in the town where he lives to attest to Jean, when he does a background check, that he has a stable business and plenty of money. Sure enough, only four years, and one young daughter later, her husband who borrowed all his money and status off of the name of his future father-in-law, is near bankruptcy. He has assured his creditors that Jean Buddenbrook will pay off his debts. Instead, though, in one of his most tender moments, Jean Buddenbrook asks his daughter her opinion! He asks if she's truly happy or if she would rather come home with her young daughter. There is grounds for divorce due to the fraud. Even though it is a disgrace to her name, so she thinks, Tony wants to go home so a divorce is granted. By now, a fourth child has been added to the Buddenbrook siblings...young Clara.

As time goes on, the four Buddenbrook children grow up and you can begin to see the decline of the wealth and the family name and prosperity. Just in small bits at first, but it happens. First of all, Jean Buddenbrook passes away relatively young, so Thomas is only in his late teens when he is thrust into control of the family business. Along with another man who has been a minor partner of the firm, he does manage to bring youth and vitality to the company and run it just fine. The thing is...the company becomes his life! He is also awarded the title of Consul, and actually moves farther than his father did in the political scene when he becomes a senator. In his most profitable years, he marries a young musical talent, Gerda, and they build a magnificent new house. This becomes the beginning of the end. Thomas regrets how much money he puts into the house, but appearance is everything to keep the company going so Thomas always spends money on the best clothes, etc., and still hosts grand parties for clients, friends, and all. Meanwhile, he and Gerda have only one young son to carry on the Buddenbrook name and hopefully take over the company some day.

Christian, the second brother, has become a worthless, complaining, partier, who sponges money off everyone and even cashes in part of his inheritance that will come once his mother dies. He's a wild story teller, and though he tries working at the company, it only lasts for two weeks before his wanderlust gets the best of him. He's the weakest and most selfish member of the family and can't even stay in the room when his mother is dying to be with her. He thinks only of himself and how it is affecting him. He amounts to nothing, truly, and by the end of the book is in a sanatorium for crazy people.

Tony, with the mark of a divorce against her, longs to marry again and reclaim her good name. More than anything, she wants to improve the Buddenbrook reputation by marrying and erasing the other bad experience. Of course, she does marry again, with the approval of her brother Tom, but again...the man is a no good. Despite having his own company, he takes the dowry of Tony (a much smaller one this time) and declares right after their marriage that he is retiring and they will live off of what they have! This will, of course, make Tony have to work her fingers to the bone while he goes out and drinks every night with the men. So, Tom goes to fetch Tony and she's got another divorce under her belt. Feeling guilty, at least this husband sends the dowry money back. Tony's entire story is basically one dramatic sob story after another, yet she does remain one of the strongest characters in the book. Her own daughter, Erika, marries an insurance man who commits fraud in his own company and is sent to prison. Not before Erika has her own daughter, baby Elisabeth.

Youngest daughter Clara marries an older clergyman and moves away. She doesn't have any children and dies tragically of tuberculosis of the brain at a young age. Meanwhile, Thomas and Gerda's young son is born, but with great difficulty for mother and child. He will be their only child and he is named after his grandfather, Johann. All of the family's and the company's hopes ride on this poor, sickly young child. Johann is very sensitive and musically inclined and shy and not all all what his father expects from a son. He is nearly terrorized at the thought of taking over the company, which his father starts bothering him about from a young age. He's not athletic and not particularly smart, and is really only moved by playing music.

As all these personal dramas are unfolding, Johann Buddenbrook, the company, is on the decline. A few different wars and stock drops and bankruptcies by other companies have greatly affected the company worth. When Jean's widow, Elisabeth, the family matriarch, finally passes away, Thomas decides that the huge mansion that has been in the family since the children were young must be sold. Unfortunately it is sold to their family nemesis, which breaks Tony's heart. Also, Elisabeth had promised Clara on her own deathbed that when she herself passed away, that Clara's widower would inherit Clara's Buddenbrook inheritance, i.e., one-fourth of the family inheritance. Under tremendous stress, Thomas Buddenbrook has his own health crisis and dies suddenly! Gerda is then forced to sell their own huge mansion and buy a smaller house. Having seen that his son would never be willing or able to take over the family company, Thomas just earlier in the year had written a will and stipulated that upon his death, Johann Buddenbrook, the company, would be dissolved and sold off. :-(

By now, Tony and her daughter and granddaughter live in a small home on their own. Christian is still in the sanatorium. And, Gerda and young Johann live in their modest home. Johann is now fifteen and still very sickly, very timid, very non-studious, often bullied, and very fearful of school since he never studies. He spends all his time composing his own music and going to the occasional theater production when his mother will take him. One of the last chapters goes through a day in the life of Johann, and shows, basically, how uncertain and unhappy he is. He doesn't know what he wants to "be", despite being guided and asked by his guardian, his late father's good friend. Then, sadly, Mann suddenly writes a chapter detailing how typhoid fever affects the body...and all its debilitating symptoms. There's always a crisis point that is reached, and the strong-willed people can live through it (sometimes) and those of a lesser, weaker will cannot. He uses these pages to introduce us to the grim reality that young Johann has typhoid fever. :-( In a heartbreaking paragraph, which I will include below, young Johann succumbs to the illness. In the end, Gerda and Tony lament the end of his life and that Gerda is going to move back to her father's home in Amsterdam. The end.

There is, of course, and as usual, so much more to the 700+ page story than I can put into words in a blog. Mann goes into such character depth and emotion. You truly live each event that happens with each member of the family as it happens. Though it was the decline of the family and there was no happy ending, I still really loved this book! I'm not sure there IS a book out there on my "to read" list with a happy ending, but I'm pressing on!

Now, the heartbreaking passage of young Johann's passing:

Typhoid runs the following course:  
    As he lies in remote, feverish dreams, lost in their heat, the patient is called back to life by an unmistakable, cheering voice. That clear, fresh voice reaches his spirit wandering along strange, hot paths and leads it back to cooling shade and peace. The patient listens to that bright, cheering voice, hears its slightly derisive admonishment to turn back, to return to the regions from which it calls, to places that the patient has left so far behind and has already forgotten. And then, if there wells up within him something like a sense of duties neglected, a sense of shame, of renewed energy, of courage, joy, and love, a feeling that he still belongs to that curious, colorful, and brutal hubbub that he has left behind--then, however far he may have strayed down that strange, hot path, he will turn back and live. But if he hears the voice of life and shies from it, fearful and reticent, if the memories awakened by its lusty challenge only make him shake his head and stretch out his hand to ward them off, if he flees farther down the path that opens before him now as a route of escape--no, it is clear, he will die.

Finished: The Beautiful and the Damned (Fitzgerald). Hmm, maybe my favorite of the Fitzgerald novels, or maybe tied with This Side of Paradise! I think the opening paragraph was one of my favorite opening paragraphs of most of the books I've read. I don't know why, but I just liked it. Here it is:

    In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"---yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows. 
    This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch---not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward---a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.

With this introduction we meet Anthony Patch. His grandfather, Adam Patch, is filthy rich. A civil war veteran, after the war he amassed a fortune of 75 million dollars. He and his wife had only one son, Anthony's father. Sadly, when Anthony was only five his mother died and then when he was eleven his father died. Instead of being brought into the fold and raised lovingly by his grandfather, Anthony was raised by private tutors abroad and not until he returned to the country to attend Harvard did he really begin to socialize with young men of his own age. For these reasons, and these only, I tolerated reading about the "poor, put upon" Anthony as he spent his entire twenties not working, living the social life, carousing with his best friends, Maury and Dick, and basically ignoring his grandfather...and mostly, waiting for his grandfather to die and leave him his huge fortune. Of course, this doesn't sit well with Adam Patch, who has become known for his pro-prohibition viewpoint. In fact, he's spent nearly half his fortune on it and other "reforms". Anthony is just flitting through life this way...not a bad or arrogant person, but just one who was not taught the value of working for your own dollar. He meets and falls in love with the beautiful, vivacious, free-spirited Gloria. In an aside I truly enjoyed, Fitzgerald writes of Beauty as a main character in this small two-page play who comes to life every 100 hundred years in human form. She will be the envy of all women and the desire of all men. Thus we are introduced to Gloria! When Anthony sees her:

Surely the freshness of her cheeks was a gossamer projection from a land of delicate and undiscovered shades; her hand gleaming on the stained table-cloth was a shell from some far and wildly virginal sea....

Love that writing! ::::sigh::::  So, Anthony and Gloria have a push and pull courtship until they both decide they are madly in love and can't live without each other. At this point, Anthony lives on the interest from $100,000 inherited from his mother. By the end of the book, after about eight years of marriage, they've blown through all that money. Anthony becomes a raging alcoholic, drinking heavily night and day. They still throw wild dancing and drinking parties in their home. Anthony tries a couple of jobs...one procured for him by his grandfather, but he quits within two weeks time. He's just not cut out for working. One night in the middle of one of their drunken parties, when Anthony is about 28 and Gloria about 26, the very old and frail Adam Patch shows up at their house with his manservant. Seeing the horror, he turns and leaves without a word. All efforts by Anthony to talk to his grandfather the next week are rebuffed. Anthony and Gloria fear greatly that Adam Patch will cut Anthony from his will. When his grandfather dies two weeks later, his manservant is left several million, and even some distant cousins, but the 30 million left in the estate is set up in a trust for the manservant to manage and dole out to charities as he sees fit! Anthony is left with nothing. Anthony hires a lawyer to have the will overturned and thus ensues a four year battle. During that four years, though, neither Anthony or Gloria ever buck up and settle down and try to earn a living on their own. They cash in more and more of the initial $100,000 from Anthony's mother until they are nearly destitute.

At the age of 32, Anthony has sunk lower than he could ever imagine. He must have a drink to start the day. He is belligerent to everyone, and picks fights even with his friends. In desperation, he reaches out to his old friend Maury who he had broken off with in bad terms a few years before. Maury ignores him and goes on his way. Gloria? She wants a new fur coat that she knows she can't afford. Mostly, she just wants her beauty to stay. Finally, after delay after delay and appeal after appeal, the day for the trial decision about the will has come. Gloria is going to ride to the trial with her cousin, and the other friend of Anthony's, Dick. Anthony will meet them there. Anthony, at his wits end, is visited right before he heads out the door by a young woman who he had an affair with while he spent a year in the army. She heard about the trial, and loves him, loves him, loves him, she exclaims. Anthony goes crazy berserk and throws a chair at her! She flees. Gloria and Dick come in from the trial searching for Anthony. He never showed up! They finally find him upstairs playing with his old stamp collection...his pride and joy and comfort when he was a boy after his parents died. They exclaim to him that the will was overturned!! Anthony is now worth 30 million dollars. Isn't it wonderful? Sadly, Anthony no longer cares. He's snippet of a shadow of his former self. What he thought would make him happy and looked forward to for all those years, simply doesn't matter to him now...or else his mind has finally rotted from all the alcohol.

    "Anthony!" cried Gloria tensely, "we've won! They reversed the decision!"
    "Don't come in," her murmured wanly, "you'll muss them. I'm sorting, and I know you'll step in them. Everything always gets mussed."
    "What are you doing?" demanded Dick in astonishment. "Going back to childhood? Don't you realize you've won the suit? They've reversed the decision of the lower courts. You're worth thirty millions!"
    Anthony only looked at him reproachfully.
    "Shut the door when you go out." He spoke like a pert child.
    With a faint horror dawning in her eyes, Gloria gazed at him----
    "Anthony!" she cried, "what is it? What's the matter? Why didn't you come---why, what is it?"
    "See here," said Anthony softly, "you two get out---now, both of you. Or else I'll tell my grandfather."
    He held up a handful of stamps and let them come drifting down about him like leaves, varicolored and bright, turning and fluttering gaudily upon the sunny air: stamps of England and Ecuador, Venezuela and Spain----Italy....

 The book ends with Anthony and Gloria on a cruise abroad. Anthony is only 32 but a practical invalid in a wheelchair with a nurse to look after him. Oh, he's got his thoughts about him, but he's in a mode of reminiscing now about all his hardships. Gloria has her new fur coat.

OK, so it doesn't sound like a happy book at all, and it isn't. And...the characters, none of them, are people you would pull for. However, the writing in the book is so good and so descriptive and so heartfelt. It's just a shame that Fitzgerald only had four novels before he died at such a young age. And now I've read them all.   :-(  Five novels if you count his last one which was unfinished when he died. I don't know if I'll read that once since someone else had to finish it!

Finished: Sons and Lovers (Lawrence) A pretty good book, but a bit too angst-ridden for me. Sons and Lovers is very high up on so many lists of the top books that I finally decided to give it a try. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but that might be a good thing. I think one review I had read long ago implied that the mother and her sons actually had relationships that bordered on, well, relationships. Thankfully, I didn't find this to be the case. Both the boys in the story were definitely very attached to their mother and held her in the highest esteem such that it was hard for them to truly love other women without comparing them to their mother, wanting them to have her same qualities, and without feeling as if they were somehow betraying their mother. I don't know...is this rather normal? Maybe so. Anyway...Sons and Lovers is the story of Gertrude Coppard, a young woman of a bit higher class than the coal-mining man she meets at a Christmas dance, Walter Morel, who sweeps her off her feet. They get married and spend the first year, or thereabouts, in newlywed heaven, but then reality sets in. Gertrude must adjust to the lesser lifestyle of being a coal miner's wife. She actually does fine with that aspect, making ends meet, and makes the most of their little home. It's when Walter starts going out drinking with the other men every night that she starts having problems. Soon enough they have four children, William, Annie, Paul and Arthur. Walter is never close to his children and he's a nasty, belligerent, bullying drunk. The boys grow up despising him and adoring their mother, who they feel holds the family together. Of course, Mrs. Morel adores her oldest son most, since he was the only son for seven years. She loves her daughter too, but openly admits that she loves her sons more, as a mother loves her boys. She and William are close and he shares all his thoughts and aspirations with her. As he gets older and moves away to London, she also develops a close relationship with Paul. Paul is the brooding artist of the family who internalizes his every thought and feeling. It is those thoughts and feelings that take up most of the pages of Sons and Lovers. Paul struggles with his physical desire for his longtime "steady" girl, Miriam, and goes eight years without even kissing her. However, he feels that she knows him to his soul...always wanting to talk about deep issues, his painting, literature, etc. Mrs. Morel can't stand Miriam because she feels like she's not like just some nice girl who will take her son away from her, but always leave a little bit behind for the mother. She can feel Miriam sucking Paul's entire soul away from her. Paul and Miriam finally take their relationship to the complete physical level, and Miriam can see that even though they've made love, Paul has not really given himself completely to her. Meanwhile, William brings a girl home that he'd like to marry, but she's very superficial and draining on William as well. He confides to his mother that he doesn't really even love her...that she's not deep enough, but it's gone on so long that he sees no way of getting out of marrying her. All that is a moot point when William dies suddenly of an infection. :-( William's death shakes the whole family and especially Mrs. Morel. She sits for weeks in a daze in her rocker until one day Paul comes down with a near fatal case of pneumonia. Nursing Paul back to health, Mrs. Morel realizes that she has other children to live for, especially Paul, and she comes back to life. Arthur, the youngest son, is not really prominent in the story. He's the best looking of the boys. He drunkenly signs up for the military one night, and though his mom goes down to rescue him from it, it's too late so he must serve. He ends up getting a girl pregnant, marrying her, and growing up a bit. Annie finally marries her longtime beau and also ends up with her own place with children. It's Paul who stays with his parents until he's 24 or 25 and constantly shares his day's events with his mother, vacations with her, paints for her, etc. He also discovers he's attracted to another young woman named Clara, who is separated from her husband. After he and Miriam split apart, he begins a physical relationship with Clara, but again, cannot give himself wholly to her. He frets, and thinks, and broods, and always goes back to the thought that he can't love anyone the way he loves his mother. He always talks about going abroad, but never until his mother has passed away. Unfortunately, his mother does become ill about that time. She ends up having heart problems and then a cancerous tumor, so Paul, Annie, and Arthur watch their mother die a slow death. She tries to be lively, but the life is sucked out of her. Walter Morel is no help. He's always run from his fears and towards the bottle, but he tries his best to be tender to her the one or two times he pokes his head in the sick room. In the end, Mrs. Morel dies and Paul is bereft. He encourages Clara to get back with her estranged husband. And, he turns down an offer from Miriam to finally marry him after all these years. He seems to be heading into the dark abyss to follow his mother into death when he talks himself out of it. He tells himself that his mother would want to live on through his painting, and even through children that he may one day have. He turns from the dark night back towards the lights of the town as the story ends. So...that's it. I really wasn't blown away...not enough for the book to be considered so highly by so many literary types. But then again, I guess I'm not that kind of a literary type so what do I know? Hoping to find a more light-hearted book next time around! And, I promise not to ever make Josh feel like any girls he brings home have to live up to me! Hee hee :-)