A Different Wrinkle in Time

The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger.

Love is worth waiting for.

Time is relative.

What's in the past is past.

There are some things we cannot prevent.

We all must work with what we are given.

There are lots of messages singing out in these pages. Clare is married to Henry, a man who literally cannot keep himself in the present and who she meets at first as a child, when he is middle-aged, and then when she's an adult, when Henry is much closer to her age. The story is told from both of their points of view, and of course it jumps around in time, cleverly foreshadowing certain events and revisiting them from a different point of view.

Does Audrey Niffenegger succeed in making the story plausible? At first, I thought that this would be the most important question, but actually, I got so caught up in the story that I was willing to accept the fact that Henry had a genetic condition called Chrono-Displacement Disorder. IF that existed, how would one cope with being suddenly ripped out of the present and thrown into the past or future? In addition to his absences from his present, Henry also faces real dangers when he time travels, since there is no telling where he will be thrown and he always arrives with absolutely no essentials--not even clothing. He learns to live by his wits, something that gets harder and harder. Henry and Clare's relationship is strong, but challenged. So are other aspects of their lives.

I felt sorry for both Clare and Henry throughout the book. Meeting Henry when she's a child affects Clare's entire life, so it seems as if she's always waiting for Henry. It is a creatively poignant love story.

And that's all I'll say, except that I found it to be an intriguing page-turner, and I can certainly see why it's been so popular.

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

It's been a week since I've finished this novel, but I still haven't figured out what I want to say about it. It's certainly a story that stays in one's mind a long time.

Four different people of different ages and nationalities converge under one roof somewhere in Italy as World War II is ending. Hana the exhausted nurse, Caravaggio the thief, Kip the Indian sapper, and the burn victim everyone refers to as "the English patient" become a part of each other's everyday lives and form an unusual but close social set for a precious sliver of time. During these months, the reader is led through a series of flashbacks that illuminate each of their intriguing pasts.

There are so many good and interesting stories created with this time period as the backdrop, but I feel that this one is unique in its ending, specifically the end of the four-way friendship.

The English Patient is written beautifully and sparingly; Michael Ondaatje tells us just enough facts. Nothing is overwritten or revisited, and I found myself hanging on every word.

Actually, I'd like to see the movie again!

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

"When you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true".

The Alchemist has been called "an exciting novel that bursts with optimism; it is the kind of novel that tells you that everything is possible as long as you really want it to happen," but I must stand up and confess that I did not find it exciting. Perhaps the book is just too religious for me to grasp, but although I thought it a charming tale, I did not really know what to make of it. The simplicity of the writing has also been praised, but I found the story teller's style tiresome to read, too choppy. I realize that Coelho did not write this book in English, but I suspect that the staccato nature of the writing was not lost in translation.

So, if you read this and adored it, feel free to scold me. Perhaps I had unreal expectations.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Mike and I went out for dinner in Annville the other night, so of course we stopped at The Allen to catch a good flick, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Frances McDormand and Amy Adams are just wonderful in this spoof that feels like an Oscar Wilde play without the famous lines. It's a funny and romantic feel-good journey through one deliciously action-packed day. And there are some very good-looking men in this flick, too. Something for everyone!

A Stunning Memoir

It is not hard to understand why Carlos Eire's memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana won the 2003 National Book Award for nonfiction. It is beautifully written in a poetic style that I cannot compare to anyone else's. His boyhood memories come alive with perfectly balanced doses of hilarity and poignancy and they are fascinating.

Carlos Eire was born in Havana in 1950 and left in 1962, one of fourteen hundred children who arrived in the United States without their parents, airlifted out of Fidel Castro's Cuba by Operation Pedro Pan. Eire and his brother were reunited with their mother three years later, but never saw their father again.

This memoir describes the tropical paradise that was the Havana of his childhood, the games he and his friends liked to play, the movie theaters, the ocean, the pools. Oh, and the lizards. Eire had a special fear and hatred for the lizards. Anyway, when Castro took over, absolutely everything about their lives was changed. Their entire culture was erased in a way that is hard to imagine, and it happened very, very quickly.

Preambulo

This is not a work of fiction.
But the author would like it to be.
We improve when we become fiction,
each and every one of us,
and when the past becomes a novel our memories are sharpened.

Memory is the most potent truth.
Show me history untouched by memories
and you show me lies.
Show me lies not based on memories and you show me the worst lies of all.

If all the characters in this book are fictional, none of them knows it yet.

All resemblances to actual persons
were preordained before the creation of the world.
It matters little that the names don't always match.

All the incidents and dialogue come straight from God's imagination.
As does the author himself.
And the reader.

Still, all of us are responsible for our own actions.
Not even Fidel is exempt from all this.
Nor Che, nor his chauffeurs, nor his mansion.
Nor the many Cubans who soiled their pants
before they were shot to death.
Nor the fourteen thousand children who flew away from their parents.
Nor the love and desperation that caused them to fly.

There is so much to say about this memoir, but it's best if you read it yourself. Enjoy!

Horton Hears a Who!

This movie is hilarious and clever, and expands on the children's book in a way that absolutely never gets boring, and is faithful to the message of Horton's story, 100%. And yes, I'm aware that most of the film adaptations of Dr. Seuss books have not gone well, but this one is very good.

You may ask why a grown woman with no children would step out and see Horton Hears a Who, and I will tell you: because my mother and older sister invited me. We had a blast, even without the popcorn shenanigans. See Horton Hears a Who! How long has it been since you had a good belly laugh?

That's creative

A staircase-bookshelf. Pretty cool. More views of this over there.