A Northern Light

I am not good at describing books that I have read, so I must depend on amazon.com to help me out. Any way, I just read an excellant book. I really did not want to read it, but I write AR tests for school and this was a book that I needed to write a test for. I am so glad that I read it. It kept me engrossed to the very end. It is a fictional story that intertwines with a true story. Read below to see a synopsis of the book.


Amazon.com
It's 1906 and 16-year-old Mattie Gokey is at a crossroads in her life. She's escaped the overwhelming responsibilities of helping to run her father's brokedown farm in exchange for a paid summer job as a serving girl at a fancy hotel in the Adirondacks. She's saving as much of her salary as she can, but she's having trouble deciding how she's going to use the money at the end of the summer. Mattie's gift is for writing and she's been accepted to Barnard College in New York City, but she's held back by her sense of responsibility to her family--and by her budding romance with handsome-but-dull Royal Loomis. Royal awakens feelings in Mattie that she doesn't want to ignore, but she can't deny her passion for words and her desire to write.
At the hotel, Mattie gets caught up in the disappearance of a young couple who had gone out together in a rowboat. Mattie spoke with the young woman, Grace Brown, just before the fateful boating trip, when Grace gave her a packet of love letters and asked her to burn them. When Grace is found drowned, Mattie reads the letters and finds that she holds the key to unraveling the girl's death and her beau's mysterious disappearance. Grace Brown's story is a true one (it's the same story told in Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy and in the film adaptation, A Place in the Sun), and author Jennifer Donnelly masterfully interweaves the real-life story with Mattie's, making her seem even more real.

Mattie's frank voice reveals much about poverty, racism, and feminism at the turn of the twentieth century. She witnesses illness and death at a range far closer than most teens do today, and she's there when her best friend Minnie gives birth to twins. Mattie describes Minnie's harrowing labor with gut-wrenching clarity, and a visit with Minnie and the twins a few weeks later dispels any romance from the reality of young motherhood (and marriage). Overall, readers will get a taste of how bitter--and how sweet--ordinary life in the early 1900s could be. Despite the wide variety of troubles Mattie describes, the book never feels melodramatic, just heartbreakingly real. (14 and older) --Jennifer Lindsay --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Lisey's Story by Stephen King

Stephen King has been my favourite author since I was 12 or 13, going on (gulp!) 25 years now. His books are the only ones I buy immediately, in hardcover, for full price.

Lisey's Story is about the widow of a renowned author of horror, her late husband, and exactly where he gets his ideas from. Lisey clearly is inspired by his own wife, Tabitha.

I found it a little slow at first, but when it picked up, BAM!

Good, creepy, classic Stephen King fun.

That's a picture of his house in Bangor, by the way, that I took last summer on vacation. Check out the spiderweb design on the gates.

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

Another good book. This one made me cry though - at the end - when the truth finally came out. I don't know how to really explain this one so I "borrowed" this quote from Amazon.com.

While Kidd places an obvious importance on the role of mysticism and legend in this tale, including the mysterious mermaid's chair at the center of the island's history, the relationships between characters is what gives this novel its true weight. Once she returns to her childhood home, Jessie is forced to confront not only her relationship with her estranged mother, but her other emotional ties as well. After decades of marriage to Hugh, her practical yet conventional husband, Jessie starts to question whether she is craving an independence she never had the chance to experience. After she meets Brother Thomas, a handsome monk who has yet to take his final vows, Jessie is forced to decide whether passion can coexist with comfort, or if the two are mutually exclusive. As her soul begins to reawaken, Jessie must also confront the circumstances of her father's death, a tragedy that continues to haunt Jessie and Nelle over thirty years later.

My only complaint is this book was too short. I finished it in one afternoon/evening.

In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner

This was an awesome book. I really enjoyed it. It's about 2 sisters who are complete opposites and who, for various reasons, then have to make some serious changes to their lives. They find out maybe they're not so different after all. I liked the way the author gave them each separate personalities and let us go on the journey with each of the girls as they tried to figure out who they really were and what they really wanted for themselves. It's a journey everybody has to go through as some point in their lives. I know I did.

(Thanks for lending me the book, Netter.)

The Memory Keeper's Daughter: The Desperate Housewife Review

I thought this was a really good book, but like Netter, it made me mad!
I kept thinking how I would feel if my husband gave away my baby and told me she was dead, because he wanted to spare me the pain of having a Down's syndrome child.
It demonstrates how a split- second decision can change the lives of many people, and how a single lie can get away from you and grow and grow.
A sad book, but an interesting one that held my attention.
Two thumbs up.