life after life. kate atkinson. (112)

i had never heard of kate atkinson before but both amazon and barnes and nobles sent out emails promoting her new book "life after life" the week it came out.  since the premise sounded interesting, a woman, ursula todd dies numerous times but is always reborn, i decided to check it out.

i wasn't sure what to expect but i really enjoyed "life after life" like five stars on goodreads.com enjoy.  as the cover informed me, author gillian flynn called it "one of the best novels [she's] read this century", which initially sounded impressive but after realizing that we are only 13 years into this century, i can agree with her.  

"life after life" was enthralling, i had to find out how urusla's lives would turn out and what she would alter or how fate would alter it for her.  though i will admit there was a period when i did get a bit bored with her life (after she purposely killed herself for the first time) but it was

mostly because she lost her psyhic-esque powers.  also i couldn't put it down because i had to find out how it ended!  the book opens with an event that takes place in germany in 1930 and given the time and the place it is foreshadowed that hitler was assassinated!  this kept me reading and searching because i had to find out how would ursula's lives got to that point?

the novel is filled with great characters.  ursula is a wonderful protagonist that the reader becomes invested in.  one of her lives was extremely dark and was difficult to read.  as i read, all i could think about was how i hope she died soon so that she would be taken out of her misery. also i adored her family, her mother sylvie and all of her literary allusions, her sister pamela and their correspondence and of course her brother teddy since everyone adored him.  i also loved her aunt izzie.  she was a wild one but i loved izzie's crazy lifestyle and all of the colorful things she said plus she was alway there when her niece needed help.

atkinson's writing was beautiful.  her characters were poetic and as a result so is her novel.  it is filled with beautiful descriptions.  and as i mentioned before her characters are very literary and the novel is filled with allusions to keats, dante, the brönte sisters, austen and even dickens.  i loved her description of an elderly izzie as "a dipsomaniac miss havisham" (which could be an apt description for me when i get old.)

(spoiler alert:  wait to read this section until you read it!)

i do feel there were one gap i found in the novel.  for example, when ursula did kill herself, she didn't have any recollection of her previous lives yet she still went to the psychologist.  this did not make sense because the reason ursula went to the psychologist was because of peculiar  déjà vu bouts as a kid but if she had no recollection why did she go to the psychologist?  though the novel

did show some things were bound to happen regardless of ursula intervening.  (spoiler alert!!) i was also surprised as to how ursula never went back to the life in which she became a mother.  i guess she was never really one for motherhood and i am just projecting my personal choice on to her but i would have had the kid but gotten out of germany.  another  challenging part was because of the rebirths, characters were introduced before their importance was none so it was difficult to keep track of everyone.

(spoiler alert!)

i appreciated how in the end ursula could not completely alter history.  some things were meant to be a certain way regardless of ursula's interventions. and alas that is life.  people will always wish that events in history, like the rise of hitler and the holocaust never occurred but unfortunately there is no way to change things.  and instead of dwelling on "what if's", people should learn from it and prevent history from repeating itself.  ursula and pamela's son had a similar discussion to this effect. the world (or if you believe in him god) works in mysterious ways and instead of dwelling on the negative you have to continue on living.  

i find it interesting that i read "life after life" just after having read "the great gatsby" because both novel feature individuals trapped by their past. gatsby wants to go back and relive his life the way it should

have been while ursula is thrown back to relive hers.  it seems like ursula has the upper hand because she can do something gatsby can not.  however, even though ursula has the ability to go back into the past and change things, she still does not have complete control over the course of life.  life did not follow one path for ursula.  it is not like the "choose your own adventure" books of my youth in which it follows the same path and all that alters is your choice.  instead different occurrences caused things to change and some to remain the same so you never know what will occur, you can only make a choice that you think is the best and hope that it is.  this is demonstrated in the novel as ursula is often faced multiple times with the same events.  and again this is life, you have to hope your actions are for the best.

as i have gotten older, i have been dwelling on the past and what i would change if i could go back in time.  yes, i am content with my life so far, i have a wonderful set of friends, a supportive family and random adventures (i recently wrote these things down for a simmons class as to what i was grateful for.) but there are things i would change if i could be reborn as myself: i wouldn't have wasted time on certain guys, i would have study aboard, i would have taken spanish class more seriously in high school, lost my virginity at an earlier age, been a better sister/daughter/friend at times, never quit dance when i was young, did more interning, and became an art history major.  but i have no serious regrets.  and there are definitely some mistakes in my life that i would do over again because it has made the person i am today.  there are also mistakes i made that were worth it do there is that too.  

for those you that know me i am

not one for religion and do not believe in an afterlife because living for etenity sounds tedious and draining.  however, i have always found the idea of reincarnation intriguing but not coming back as different things but as the same person.  it's odd because i have thought of this before reading this book.  i could believe in a universe in which existence is a series of cycles, we get one life and we come back and relive it for all of etenity.  and sometimes we make the right decisions and sometimes we make

the wrong ones but life just goes

on and on in a continual circle or a cyhper that keeps moving like a rolling stone (erykah badu reference).  so if there is a faith that believes in that sign me

up! i like the idea of life after life, just like i liked the book.  

(sorry that was so cheesy but wanted to end this post but was unsure how!  lol)

beloved. toni morrison. (111)

i read toni morrison's "beloved" because it is on flavorpill's 30 before 30 list.  i have to admit, at first i was weary because of the ghost and supernatural occurances in 124.  i am not one for ghost stories but it turned out to be a tragic yet beautiful story of endurance. 

"beloved" is the tale of a family and community coping with a tragedy and the appearance of a mystery woman.  the tragic event was when slaveowners found escaped slave sethe (the protagonist) to return her to the farm and in an attempt to keep her children safe, she kills her infant daughter.  sethe is jailed and the slaveowner frightened by the sight leaves her alone.  this infant daughter haunts her house and the community and then comes back in the form of an actual person, beloved.  

infanticide is a horrible crime yet is justifiable considering the horrors of slavery.  i might sound like a horrible person but i understand why sethe killed her baby.  better for that baby to die at the hands of her mother than later in life by her slaveowner or the clan.  also better to avoid a life of abuse and treatment like an animal.  actually as demonstrated in paul d's (an old friend of sethe who becomes her lover) story about how he was jealous of a rooster when he realized it was more free than him.  its horrible to imagine any situation in which a human is treated less than an animal but sadly this was how the american institution of slavery was.

in my post for art spiegelman's "maus", i discussed how "maus" allows readers to truly understand a part of history that one would only know due to history books but not as a human experience.  the same can be said for "beloved".  in school, we learn about slavery yet we have have no idea what it was really like.  in history books there are excerpts from slave narratives but unless you read one it's can not grasp the full experience of a slave.  furthermore, i would assume american textbooks present slaveflaw oils not be complete honesty about slavery and present it in a sympathetic light because american society would not want its student to see its country negatively.  to get a honest perspective one has to look elsewhere. "beloved" allows the reader to do just that, it puts things into perspective.  

for example, i knew that slaves were separated from their family members; families torn apart because they were viewed as property but it was different when i read about it in "beloved".  reading about baby suggs, sethe's mother-in-law, trying to find out which farms her children were taken to or how paul d was  amazed and envious when he met generations of black families that were able to stay together, framed it in a ways i could relate.  but the best example was paul d thought that sethe love for her daughter denver was "risky":

for a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much is dangerous . . . the best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit; everything, just a bit, so when they broke it back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.

it sad to imagine a world in which affection and love for your child was

dangerous because at any moment they could be taken away from you.  and yes all parents fear losing a child but for slaves it was a fact of life. furthermore, imagine your family bonds not being respected because you were not viewed as a person.  family relations were ignored because slaves were not viewed as having them because they were property.

another aspect of "beloved" that left an impression on me was the hopelessness of slavery and how individuals coped with it.  all the characters had to deal with it but i believe baby suggs was the best example because she was free and yet did not find happiness.  her son, sethe's husband, had bought her freedom but even than it did not result in peace for her. baby suggs was a spiritual leader but after the tragedy with sethe, her spirit was broken.  like she told her friend stamp when he asked why she didn't preach anymore and accused her of punishing god, she replied "not like He punish me".  it's hard to believe in a god that does not stop the suffering in one's life.  i have always said that i could never be job so i undertstand baby sugg's frustration with god.  as a result of her hopelessness, baby suggs went to bed and stayed there, her "wish was to consider what in the world was harmless" and she did that by thinking about colors because they never harmed anyone.  it was sad but beautiful how she found comfort in colors, she still had hope even if she didn't have faith in god.

another example of this hopelessness was the chain gang that paul d worked on.  it was explained that the gang would sing as they worked:

singing love songs to Mr. Death, they smashed his head.  more than the rest, they killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on.  making them think the next sunrise would be worth it . . .

morrison's analogy of life as a flirt is quite clever though sad.  it's one thing to not have faith in god but quite another to not have faith in life.  

though "beloved" demonstrated the horrors of slavery, the lesson to be learn is to not hold on to the past.  (this is also the same lesson of "the great gatsby" which is also on the 30 before 30 list. hmmmm).  as explained before, sethe's dead daughter comes back to life as beloved and at first sethe is happy because it gives her the opportunity to right her wrong.  however, even though sethe wa regretful and tried to give beloved the love she needed, in the end, beloved destroyed her.  and that is how it is in life, if you cling to the past it will ruin you (like seen in "gatsby").  instead one must accept their past, mistakes and all, and continue to life on.  one can not let tragedy stop them.  an individual must learn to endure the pain that life can be at times.

i wonder if this is the one of the overall lesson of the flavorpill list?  so far two books about not holding onto the past.  but regardless, "beloved" was a wonderful novel and should be read regardless of your age.

the great gatsby. f. scott fitzgerald.

before i start, seriously how tender is the dedication page. it's about as tender as night is.

so as i explained in my previous post i wasn't impressed with my initial reading of "the great gatsby". looking back, it's probably because instead of getting a great love story between daisy and gatsby, i got a lesson on how one should leave the past in the past. and since i was looking for love and came up empty handed, i reacted like the cold hearted person i am, indifferent. it wasn't bad but it didn't make leave a lasting impression on me. plus "the great gatsby" is always always claimed as an important american classic but i didn't seem that great to me.

however, on my second read i had a greater appreciation for "the great gatsby". i am embarrassed that on my first reading, i neglected fitzgerald's beautiful prose. i remember finding so many great lines in "this side of paradise" (which was my second fitzgerald read) but didn't find any lines interesting on my first read, but that definitely changed on my second. maybe it's because i have become a more avid reader of the classics and also have read more of fitzgerald's works so am now more qualified to identify great lines. here are some of my favorite:

“if personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promise of life, as if he related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away."

“i hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

“there are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”

“and I like large parties. they’re so intimate. at small parties there isn’t any privacy.”

“i wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.”

“let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”

"it was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.”

“in his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”

“thirty--the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”
(god, it sucks getting old).

and of course with this more careful reading, i realized how great of a novel
"the great gatsby" is.  the story line had so many twist and turns. first there is the mystery and suspense of "who is gatsby". my favorite tale was of the girl who ripped her dress at his party and how he sent her a replacement. then, of course the story of love lost then found. and last but not least the surprising ending of gatsby and the demonstration of how horrible and cruel people can be. unfortunately, gatsby's ending was for the best because as horrible as tom was, daisy would have never left him. and loke i said before it is so sad how daisy and tom ruined people's lives and then just moved on with their own.

in my usual fashion with love stories (see: anna karenina, wuthering heights) i could not indulge in gatsby's love for daisy. instead of finding it romantic, i found it pathetic. yes, i believe that everyone has one great love in their life but if life doesn't work out for you than that person was not your true great love. trust me, i spent years pining after one person in my twenties and realize now that i was not in love with that person but in love with the idea of him. and that is what happen with gatsby, he wasn't in love with daisy but the memory of her. daisy was no longer the young girl from louisville, gatsby fell in love with but he couldn't grasp that. gatsby's inability to understand this is because he got stuck in a moment (to quote U2). and that is the saddest part of the book, even more sad than his death. whereas daisy went on with her life: got married, had a kid and lived; gatsby stayed trapped by his love for her. he spent 5 years trying to impress her, some may call this romance but i call it a waste of time.

but of course, it's unhappy ending is what makes it more true. i know i hated it at first but in actuality it is what makes the story great. and my sincerest apologies to f. scott, it is great but still think it would have been more compelling if i read it at an earlier age.

ps. flavorpill had an article about reading "the great gatsby" for the first time at 37 article about reading "the great gatsby" for the first time at the age of 37. it best describes why one should read it at an earlier age though it is good at any age.