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Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

A few years ago, I decided that I needed to reacquaint myself with the classics, so after an unsuccessful attempt at Don Quixote due to sheer boredom (I would still like to finish this one day), I picked up a copy of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and delved in.  First published by Thomas Cautley Newby in London in 1847 under the name Ellis Bell, Wuthering Heights tells the tragic tale of Catherine and Heathcliff.  Not a favorite among early critics because of its dark themes of jealousy and vengefulness, and how the effects of which can destroy lives, it struck a chord with readers, and still does, because it is so much more than that.  Yes, jealousy and revenge play a huge part and are central themes to the novel, but it is where they come from that is even more powerful: love ignored.

The novel opens with Mr Lockwood, a man who is renting the house Thrushcross Grange as a means of relaxation.  He goes to visit Heathcliff, the landlord who lives in a house called Wuthering Heights, and notices that the household seems a bit strange.  Upon his return to Thrushcross Grange – he had been detained to stay with Heathcliff in his home due to inclement weather – he asks the housekeeper, Nelly, to tell him the story of Heathcliff and Catherine, of who seemed to be the prior occupant of the room he had slept in while staying at Wuthering Heights, and of whom seemed to be of a particular interest to Heathcliff.  At first unwilling, Nelly relents and, going back thirty years into the past, she tells Mr Lockwood the complicated story of Heathcliff and Catherine, their upbringings, their mutual love for each other, and how they ultimately were torn apart – both by each other, and by those surrounding them.

Wuthering Heights was once the home of Mr Earnshaw and his kids Hindley and Catherine.  While on a trip, Mr Earnshaw adopts a homeless boy, names him Heathcliff and brings him back home.  This is the start of two things, the first being Hindley and Heathcliff’s mutual dislike for one another because Hindley felt that Mr Earnshaw favored Heathcliff over him.  Hindley was sent away to school, only to return a few years later after his father’s death, as head of the household, reducing Heathcliff from adopted son to servant.  The second thing was that Catherine and Heathcliff became inseparable, spending as much time as they could together.  A little after Hindley returned with a wife in tow, Catherine and Heathcliff went to Thrushcross Grange to spy/make fun of the Lintons.  After being attacked by their dog, Catherine was forced to stay with the Lintons and started to like their mannerisms and the way that they lived.  She started to like Edgar Linton as well, whom she eventually marries.  Catherine’s time at Thrushcross Grange changed her forever, and she confesses her feelings to Nelly, who was her confidant.

 

“I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low I shouldn’t have thought of it.  It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now so he shall never know how I love him and that’s not because he’s handsome Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am.  Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

 

And here is where the tragedy that is Catherine and Heathcliff begins.  They both loved each other, but Catherine, not wanting to feel dejected, and under societal influences, married Edgar Linton instead.  It is a decision which, for the rest of their lives, she and Heathcliff regret.  Even Edgar Linton was aware of the love between Catherine and Heathcliff, although that didn’t stop him from marrying her.  Heathcliff disappears for a time, comes back extremely wealthy, and seeks revenge on Hindley and Edgar Linton.  After all, they are the reasons as to why he and Catherine weren’t together.  Heathcliff and Catherine reunite just before she dies, where she confesses this:

 

“The thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all.  I’m tired, tired of being enclosed here.  I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there; not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it.”

 

The rest of the novel is all about Heathcliff’s revenge, and how he treats everyone in his life.  The nice boy that he had been exists only in the past, and the present Heathcliff is a terrible man.  He encourages alcoholism, he kidnaps people and makes life seem like hell.  To him, that’s what it was.  Not to condone his bad behavior, or even to excuse it, but this was Heathcliff’s way of dealing with the fact that, not only had he loved Catherine and lost her to someone else, she never stopped loving him, and I think that that makes it all the more tragic.  To her dying day (and on it), Catherine admitted to loving Heathcliff, so, if she loved him so much, why did she choose Edgar over him?  Was the pressure of being valued in society that great that it was valued over being happy and being with the person that she actually loved?  In this case, it was – a true-to-life story about how status is often chosen over love.  Maybe not as often anymore, but it is definitely not uncommon for someone to marry a person whom they do not love.  For the dark tale that Wuthering Heights is, would Catherine and Heathcliff have faired any better if they had married?  Would they have been happy?  Maybe, but since happiness itself is void in the novel, it’s hard to tell.  Yes, they both had this connection to each other, this soul-to-soul connection that was clearly powerful and affected the ways they lived their lives once separated, but I’m not sure that that would have been enough for them.  Perhaps their love for each other grew because they were apart, and maybe, if Catherine had chosen Heathcliff, they may still have been unhappy, although I would like to imagine that they would be.  In a novel of revenge and despair spawned from love, tragedy is inevitable, but Heathcliff and Catherine were together in the end, even though neither of them lived to see it. 

Wuthering Heights is dark, and for most of the novel it depicts Heathcliff as this horrible man, but under all that Heathcliff had become (or hadn’t become), on the inside, he was just that young helpless boy, crying for his Catherine.  That’s why I love this story so much.  If you get passed the darkness of it, you come to see it more as a tragedy of a love that was never given the chance to mature, as opposed to a man filled with hate and a desire for revenge. 

I leave you with probably my favorite quote from the novel.  It’s Heathcliff just after Catherine’s death.  I think that it really conveys just how much they were in fact connected, and the love that they shared  The power of it breaks my heart every time I read it:

 

“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you – haunt me, then!  The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe.  I know that ghosts have wandered on earth.  Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!  Oh, God!  it is unutterable!  I cannot live without my life!  I cannot live without my soul!”

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Back to Yoga

After about five months or so of not being able to attend a single yoga class for various reasons, Monday morning, I made the decision that this was the week that I would give it a try.  I’d been back at the gym running for a few weeks, and I had gotten the clearance that yoga was okay again, so I figured why not…the most that it could do was hurt.  For weeks I had been afraid that it would hurt me, but when I finally made the decision to go back, I was no longer afraid.  I had a plan: leave work for Brooklyn, arrive at Billy’s, throw on my yoga gear and run to class.  So, as I was on the F train, fuming as it crawled slowly (very slowly) to my destination, all I could think about was how angry I would be if I was late or missed the class because of the train. 

Outside of social gatherings, of which I am never on time, I hate being late.  I’d rather either be early or not show up at all.  I blame my dad for this, although his penchant for being early (this includes social engagements) borderlines on insanity.  Seriously.  Last year, my dad and I attended a cousin’s christening party.  The invitation had been sent to my dad’s so I had no idea what time it was supposed to start, and we got there an hour early.  One hour.  We were the first ones in attendance; not even my cousin who was hosting the party had arrived yet.  We ended up sitting in the car – my dad stepping out multiple times to smoke – while we waited, because although it was spring, it was pretty cold out.  Another time, we had to attend a Saturday morning wedding – I think it started around eleven – and despite the fact that the church was right near my dad’s, and he’s only twenty minutes away from me, he insisted on picking me up at eight.  Eight in the morning.  This resulted in my rushing to get ready and accidentally dropping my curling iron, burning my cheek.  I spent the entire day trying to hide the burn mark (which was painful) with a piece of my hair, and weeks after doing the same.  Yes, I hate being late, but there is such a thing as being too early.  Anyway, back to yoga.

Although the train didn’t leave me with much leeway in terms of time – I had to speed walk home and then speed walk to the yoga studio – I made it with a few minutes to spare and, as it turned out, the class before mine ran a little late.  I had expected the room to be full with barely any breathing space, as I had been accustomed to, but there was barely anyone there: maybe about eight including myself.  I took a spot by the wall with the windows and went to speak to the instructor, informing her about my situation and that it was my first day back, and then the class started.

I have to admit, no matter how much yoga relaxes me, because it does, I always have trouble clearing my mind.  There’s usually a few times when I feel my thoughts wander beyond the walls of the class – thinking about the day’s past events and tasks that have yet to be completed – and I have to make conscious efforts to bring my focus back.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who has struggled with this.  It’s easy to get swept up in your life and events that surround you; it’s difficult to force yourself to take a step back and leave it all alone for an hour.  After class last night, as I was walking home, I realized that that hadn’t happened to me this time, that I had stayed focused for the whole class.  I smiled to myself.  Perhaps it was because I hadn’t taken a class in a while, or maybe, a new-found peace within myself that hadn’t been there months before.  Whatever it was, it left me with a good feeling.  There were a few things that I could not do, but for the most part, I was good.   And although today I can barely walk – the result of two days of running before yesterday’s yoga – I learned that I can in fact take yoga classes again.  🙂

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“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees.  My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.  Nelly, I am Heathcliff!  He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, and more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”

-Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

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Sarah Pekkanen’s These Girls

If I could describe Sarah Pekkanen’s These Girls in as few words as possible, it would go like this: reading this book is like having a group of sisters who will always be there to help you through your dark moments.  The term “sisters” doesn’t have to be blood; more often than not your core group is people who do not share your DNA, but rather people who share your heart.  And that is exactly what this story is about, finding friendship.  Finding people who you can open up with, and really delve into yourself – past and present.  People who will stand by you and help you through anything.

These Girls is the story of three women, Cate, Renee and Abby, who share an apartment and come together in friendship when they are in need.  We are first introduced to Cate and Renee who, aside from being roommates, are also coworkers at Gloss magazine in New York City.  In the beginning of the book Cate and Renee are practically strangers.  They barely interact at work and it seems even less so in their personal lives.  Much, much later (towards the end) we learn that they had become roommates by Cate posting an ad in their magazine’s version of an inter-office-online bulletin board.  They live in a small three bedroom apartment with another roommate who is even less visible than they are.  So much so, that I forget her name.  Early on, that roommate moves out and, as a favor to Trey, who is a journalist for a different magazine in the same building, they take Abby in, and she becomes the person that bonds them all together.

The story begins with Cate, who has just gotten a promotion to be the new features editor of the magazine.  She is ecstatic and nervous all at the same time.  It is a huge responsibility after all, and she is qualified to do it, but I feel like she never quite believes that she deserves the position.  Upon her arrival at Gloss a few years earlier, she had to tell them that she hadn’t finished her Bachelor’s degree. She had left college abruptly and fled with her then-roommate to New York City, a few credits shy of graduating.  It was senior year, and Cate had been having an affair with one of her professors.  They only dated for a few weeks, but she really fell for him.  Her falling for him wasn’t the problem though, the problem was that they had been caught by a classmate of hers having sex in his office.  News of this spread among students and staff, she had to visit the guidance counselor, and that professor was fired.  Cate became depressed, skipping classes, paper and exams, and eventually dropping out and heading to New York.  Not a soul knows about this, not even her parents or brother and she’s lied about it to them ever since.

Renee is an assistant editor and wants to get the position of beauty editor, which has just opened up, except she has to compete for it with two other women.  Renee struggles with her weight – which is criticized a lot because she isn’t a size four – taking black market diet pills that could kill her, but they make her drop weight fast and that is all that she cares about.  She recently found out that she has a half-sister who is just a little older than she is.  It turns out that when her parents were first married, her father had an affair.  Supposedly he didn’t know that the woman had gotten pregnant or that she had decided to keep the baby, and Renee has to struggle with whether or not she wants to have a relationship with her half-sister.  If I was in her place, I feel like the person to be mad at is her dad, not her half-sister, although Renee seems to hold anger towards her.  You can’t blame Renee for that, but at the same time, it’s really not her fault.

Trey is a handsome guy who works as a journalist at a rugged-outdoor-guy magazine in the same building as Gloss.  All of the women fawn over him.  He and Renee went out a couple of times, but things didn’t pan out although Renee still has a huge crush on him.  Trey is approached by Cate to do a feature story for Gloss and has a favor to ask of her as well.  His sister Abby has just come to town, she is distraught.  He has to go on a trip for a story and doesn’t want to leave her alone.  Would Cate and Renee mind if Abby stayed with them? 

Abby is a sweet girl who loves children.  She was studying to become a teacher and working part-time as a nanny with a family near her school, living in the basement of their home.  She loves the little girl that she takes care of, and soon comes to love the father as well.  The mother, who works in politics, is barely ever around, and when she is, she is not motherly whatsoever.  Renee slowly feels as if she is taking over that role.  But it is only when she goes home for an impromptu visit with her estranged parents that she puts the pieces of her life together and finds out the dark secret of her past.  Unable to cope, she flees to her brother Trey, and then into Cate and Renee’s world, changing all of their lives forever.

Told in alternating narratives from Cate, Renee and Abby, These Girls touches your heart and takes you back to that time in your life when your past still had a huge hold on you, or if you are still held by it, it helps you to take a step back and address those issues.  You get to know the characters, their hopes and dreams as well as their secrets, and they begin to feel like your own group of friends, always there when you need them.  I personally loved this because I always wished that I had had sisters growing up, or that I had amazing roommates.  I have only brothers and the last roommate that I had was a kepto, but I do have a few close girlfriends that know my deepest secrets and accept me for them (my boyfriend as well).  These Girls is a must read for all women, especially those who are in need of some comfort and to know that they are not alone.

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The Great Gatsby novel Revisited

Originally, I had planned on rereading the novel before seeing the movie, but when that didn’t happen (I was in the midst of a stack of books) I picked it up a few days after.  It only took me forty-eight hours to get through it, and I suspect that it would have taken half the time had I started it over the weekend, where I could have read uninterrupted.  That being said, the novel is quite short – under two hundred pages – and I think that everyone should pick it up whether they have never read it before or to reread it and be re-introduced into Fitzgerald’s world that is Gatsby.  Something to keep in mind, because The Great Gatsby is so short, much of the story happens just under the surface – it’s there, you just have to pluck it out.  After all, it takes place (and was written) in the 1920s, where there were speakeasies due to Prohibition, burlesque dancers, women who cut their hair shorter and dressed in sequins.  It was a loud time, but also a time where things were not talked about.  Most of Gatsby is told through the narrative voice of Nick with not a ton of dialogue, and most of the dialogue is between Nick and Gatsby.  Daisy and Gatsby barely speak to each other, yet they’re supposed to be in love.  They do, however, meet off the pages as we find out when Nick inquires with Gatsby about why his parties had suddenly stopped.  Hence, to read Gatsby, you need to read between the lines.

As I was rereading, I found myself pulling out quotes.  This is a normal occurrence of mine because I love quotes so much (I have a dictionary of quotations).  Interestingly, the quotes ended up all being from the same general area towards the end of the novel.  I particularly like this one:

“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion.  It had gone beyond her, beyond everything.”

I really feel like this quote encompasses everything that is Daisy and Gatsby’s relationship, or lack thereof.  From the moment that he met her, through the five years when they had had no contact, the Daisy in Gatsby’s mind grew to the point where, had she chosen to leave Tom and be with him, she never would have satisfied “the colossal vitality of his illusion,” and therefore Gatsby would never have been happy.  It really had gone “beyond everything.”  As much as Gatsby wanted Daisy, as much as he invented this life for her, it was much more than that.  He didn’t know who he was, and his crisis of identity started long before he met Daisy, even long before he stopped being James Gatz and became Jay Gatsby.  And I think this is the real key to understanding Gatsby.  All his life, he wanted to be someone that he wasn’t, have the life that he didn’t have, be surrounded by high society – people that he had no business hanging around.  He didn’t want to be the poor boy from the Midwest that no one knew; he wanted to be someone that everyone knew.  In a way he achieved this, but it would never be enough, just as Daisy would never be enough for him either.  She was what made him keep going, but it was the dream of her, not the Daisy in reality.  Nothing is ever quite the same as it appears in a dream, or as your mind turns it into, and Gatsby was learning that.

“With every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.”

The afternoon that they had spent in the city with Tom, Nick and Jordan, when Gatsby was trying to get Daisy to say that she never loved Tom, that was really the beginning of the end for Gatsby, where “the dead dream fought on.”  He became desperate to put the pieces of his dream back together, but it was too late; his dream was shattered.  And that really is the beauty of Fitzgerald’s work – the tragedy that is Jay Gatsby.  The prose lingers in your thoughts as you realize the magnitude of power that this little story possesses, and it stays with you for a while.  I had forgotten how powerful his writing was until last week.  And that’s why I think that everyone should read (reread) this, because it’s worth it. 

“As I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock.  He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly grasp it.  He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.”

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Smash’s End is Near

I wouldn’t say that I was shocked when I learned that NBC had cancelled Smash, with the show moved from its Tuesday night slot mid-season to Saturday (who watches shows on Saturdays unless they’re trying to catch up?) I knew it was only a matter of time, but when the official statement came out, I was a bit sad.

I have to admit, the show has seen better days.  I, myself was forgetting to tune in on the days that it was on and having to catch it on demand.  For a show that I’m supposed to love, wouldn’t I remember to turn it on?  Apparently not.  I’ve read reviews on the series as a whole, and they kept mentioning one huge thing that had changed between the first and second season: the writers.  After the first season didn’t get the ratings that NBC thought it would, they hired a new team of writers who were supposed to bring Smash out of its slump.  New characters were brought in, focal points were changed, multiple plays were going on at the same time rather than just the one, and then there were the guest stars.  While the first season had multiple stars like Nick Jonas, Uma Thurman and Bernadette Peters – who also made appearances in season two – even more stars were brought in this year including Liza Minnelli, Jennifer Hudson, Sean Hayes (Will & Grace reunion?), etc.  Even original Rent cast members Jessie L Martin and Daphne Rubin-Vega were brought in, but I have to admit, I’ve been disappointed that neither one has sang.  Crossing fingers that they will in the finale, otherwise I will not be happy.  Debra Messing even picked up the microphone in the penultimate episode, how can they not sing?!

One story line that the writers seemed to love, but highly irritated me was of Karen and Jimmy – the up-and-coming actress and the drug-addicted song writer.  In the first season I liked Karen, she had an amazing voice, she had a life outside of Broadway, and she did not sleep with the director (Derek) to get the part of Marilyn.  During the finale, a distraught Karen looked at Derek from her hiding spot behind a row of costumes after she found out that her fiancé cheated on her and I felt for her.  This season, she became increasingly annoying and infatuated with Jimmy, thinking that she could “change” him (haven’t we all thought that we could do that only to end up hollow?) and it became an obsession, she was a tiny shell of herself.  There seemed to be some chemistry between Karen and Derek, which would have been a good storyline, but the writers never fleshed that out sadly.

So what’s in store for the series finale airing this Sunday in the middle of Memorial Day weekend (great timing I must say)?  It’s the Tonys, and Karen and Ivy will probably be up for the same award, and Ivy is pregnant, probably by Derek since I don’t think that she’s dated anyone else all season.  All in all, despite my feelings of Smash this season, when the final credits roll, I’ll be sad that it won’t be coming back.

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Luhrmann’s Gatsby

Last Friday, Gatsby opened to mixed reviews, and I was there, 3-D glasses in hand, standing on an enormous line.  It was a good thing that I had purchased my tickets in advance, because when I got to the movie theater, I saw that the show-time that I had selected was the only one that was sold out.  Let me just say that I’ve never seen a movie on opening night before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I knew it would be crowded, but I did not know that it would be insane.  Yes, I knew there was Gatsby-fever (after all, I had it for the past three years), but it was unlike anything I’d seen before.  The line went pretty quickly once it started moving, but it felt like a mad-dash to find a good seat; hoards of people clumped together and coats were strewn about, appearing out of nowhere as the temperature had been near eighty all day.  Thankfully, they opened the balcony level, and I sprinted up the stairs to the perfect seats.

The previews felt like they would go on forever, but finally, the lights dimmed.  I put on my 3-D glasses and settled in.  Why Gatsby in 3-D, you ask?  Because it was the only version playing at that theater.  Two and a half hours later, I emerged into the night in desperate need of a drink; there was so much alcohol being passed around throughout the film that it made me want one.  I ended up having a few martinis, then headed home to Billy, who had not accompanied me on my Gatsby adventure (girls’ night out!) but he will in a few weeks when I drag him to see it (yes I am going again).  In the meantime, we’re both going to read Fitzgerald’s masterpiece…I have already finished it, so I will be passing it along to Billy this weekend.

Clearly, I loved the movie, otherwise I would not be planning to go again, nor would I be planning on purchasing it when it comes out.  Going in, I was a little nervous for several reasons.  One, of course being that, well, it was a Baz Luhrmann creation, and as you already know, he is pretty over-the-top in all of his films (think Romeo & Juliet, Moulin Rouge, etc).  I decided to do a little google-ing on him a while back and found out that before he started directing films, he did operas.  I went to see Puccini’s Turandot at the Met once.  It was around three and a half hours long, and I remember being fascinated with the costumes and stage designs, because they were so elaborate (explains Luhrmann’s penchant for the dramatics).  I liked it a lot and resigned myself to go to more operas, but sadly, I have not been back since.  Surprisingly, I didn’t really find the movie to be over the top, with the exception of a blow-up giraffe (did they have such a thing in the 20s?).  There were scenes that were very extravagant – for example, Gatsby’s parties, Nick’s night in town with Tom (they call NYC going to town) – but there is extravagance in the book, it was the 1920s after all, the decade to indulge.  Gatsby’s parties were lavish, end of discussion; he wanted to show off everything that he had worked for; it was all for Daisy.  Of course, the parties stopped after she attended one and did not care for it.  As for Nick’s night on the town with Tom, well, it wasn’t as extravagant as portrayed in the film version, but they did drink a lot.

Another reason why I was nervous going in, was because Jay-Z had done the soundtrack.  The New York Times published an interview with Luhrmann the week before Gatsby was released, and in it he explains his decision for this, saying that hip-hop is to us what jazz was to the 20s.  Luhrmann was trying to make it fit with todays’ world, and I understand that, but I know I’m not alone when I say that it was perhaps not the best choice on his part.  Gatsby, by all intensive purposes, is a period film, but the soundtrack doesn’t quite fit; it’s too modern.  I’m sure there could have been a way to appeal to this generation without it, after all, Gatsby is read is schools for the most part – so there’s an audience there – and for the people who haven’t read it, the movie was promoted an awful lot and DiCaprio has a huge fan base.  I’m sure it still would still have been great even if the soundtrack was a little softer.

Speaking of Leonardo DiCaprio, he did a fabulous job as Gatsby, but I never had any doubt about it.  He was able to bring a little life into the character that is Jay Gatsby, but also change with him as well.  In the novel, Gatsby goes through a ton of emotions, and as he does this, his character kind of changes as well.  We see Gatsby as: optimistic, timid, scared, happy, in-love, disappointed and broken hearted.  All of that encompasses who Jay Gatsby is, and DiCaprio does a great job portraying it.  Equally well, I though, was Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan and Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway.  I’m not familiar with Mulligan’s work, but I felt that her Daisy was perfect.  She brought to life the carefree and often careless attitude that was the character of Daisy.  She loved Gatsby, but she loved her life more.  I adore Tobey as Nick, I feel like he was very good at telling the story, because, after all, that is what Nick does in the novel, he narrates.  I loved the scenes with Gatsby and Nick, I feel like since DiCaprio and Tobey are such great friends in real life, they have amazing chemistry together and that shows up on the film.  The scenes with Gatsby and Daisy were good also; you saw the love that they had for each other, but you also saw the distance that was between them.

All in all, Gatsby was amazing and a MUST SEE for everyone.  I leave you with a quote from the novel.

“As I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock.  He had come a long was to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.  He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Sarah Pekkanen’s Skipping a Beat

Have you ever reread the last few chapters of a book mere hours after having finished it because the flood of emotions that it left you with was so great that you needed to experience them again because you just weren’t ready to let go?  That is exactly what I did the last week after I finished Sarah Pekkanen’s Skipping a Beat…and I cried both times.  I have to be honest, no matter how much a book affects me – and they do, I’m not one to shy away from laughing, smiling or crying whilst in the depths of one – it’s not often that I do this, in fact, it’s a rare occurrence.  So rare, that I cannot remember the last time I did it, although I do remember the first.

I’m not sure what grade I was in, but I know that I was pretty young.  For an English class, we had to read Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows.  Now, I thought it was one of those books that everyone has to read as a child, but I asked Billy about it last week and he hadn’t even heard of it.  It’s about a young boy named Billy (coincidence) who lives in the Ozarks.  He desperately wanted Redbone Coonhounds (dogs to hunt coons with him), but his parents were too poor to buy them for him.  One day, Billy sees an ad in the paper and resigns to earn the money himself.  It takes him two years, but he finally gets two of them, brother and sister pups which he names Old Dan and Little Ann.  Billy trains the pups to hunt and they go on hunting adventures together, until one day when they trap a mountain lion in a tree.  The mountain lion goes to attack Billy, but Old Dan saves him, though it results in his death.  A few days later, Little Ann, heartbroken, wanders to the mound where Old Dan is buried and dies as well.  I remember being so upset about this that I immediately started rereading the book from the beginning just up until Billy gets the dogs, so that they would be alive again.  I’m sure this may sound funny to some people, Melissa laughed at me when I told her about this, but to me it was very sad, and rereading part of it was absolutely necessary.

Skipping a Beat is about a husband and wife trying to re-find the love that they lost.  Julia and Michael seem to have the perfect life.  Julia owns a successful event-planning company and Michael is the president and founder of Drinkup – an enhanced water beverage that he concocted in the tiny kitchen of their first apartment – which is now worth billions.  They live in a mansion on the outskirts of DC, with his and her bathrooms, attend parties and give to charities.  But something is missing, something they haven’t had for a long time.  In high school, they were known as Mike and Julie, having started dating in their junior year and moved to DC together after they graduated.  They were so much in love and inseparable – they could talk for hours and never tire.  Michael had big dreams of ensuring that they would never be poor again, and succeeded, but is there such a thing as too much?

The novel opens up with Julia setting up an event and Michael having a heart attack.  He dies for just over four minutes, but it is in those little minutes that he makes the decision to change his/their life/lives.  Knowing that Julia couldn’t possibly understand, he asks her to give him three weeks, and she reluctantly agrees.  Throughout that time, Julia is mostly unaccepting and cold to Michael, and takes solace in the company of Isabelle, her best and only friend.  It is only towards the end of these three weeks (and the novel) that she finally lets Michael in.  But unfortunately, it’s too late.  In a chapter that broke my heart, Michael dies and a few chapters later my heart broke again when Julia finds out that he knew three weeks was all that he had left.  But then came the end and I dried my tears and smiled.  Of course, my eyes were blinded with tears once more when I set back to reread the final chapters, but it needed to be done.  Skipping a Beat has nothing in common with Where the Red Fern Grows, except my reaction towards it.  It moved me so much that I needed to read it again, needed to feel the same rollercoaster of emotions – had I read Where the Red Fern Grows now, I probably would have reread the end instead of the beginning.

Pekkanen’s characters are so real and alive, leaping off the pages and engraining themselves into your brain; you love and dislike her characters at the same time – just like in real life.  When they face despair, you cry, and when they find that silver lining, you smile.  Skipping a Beat tugs at your heart.  It shows you that you can find love again once it is lost, but you have to be willing to make the effort because it won’t be easy.  Love, once lost, is hard to regain, but not impossible.  At the core of this novel, that is the message that Pekkanen is sending.  Don’t put things off.  Carpe Diem!  But also, pick up a copy of this book and read it…it really is amazing.

Posted on by saraelizabeth419

HIMYM – The Mother of all Episodes

I consider myself to be a fan of the show How I Met Your Mother.  Despite not having seen the entirety of the past few seasons due to never being home on Monday evenings and being probably the only person in the world who does not have a DVR, I do own five seasons on DVD.  I have always thought, like everyone, that we would not get to meet the mother until the series finale and, after reading a partial interview in Entertainment Weekly (the full story will be out this Friday) with the show’s creators this morning, I realized that that indeed was the plan – until the show was renewed for a ninth and final season that is.  The creators – Carter Bays and Craig Thomas – decided to shake things up and give us what we’ve all been waiting for: the mother.  In a way, it was genius because no one was expecting it – no one except me. 

Sunday evening, as I was watching tv with Billy (yes, it was the Survivor finale, but no I didn’t watch most of it, I had been catching up on Smash and came out at the end) there was a commercial for How I Met Your Mother.  It promised a reveal and that it should not be missed.  There wasn’t any more info given, but something struck me.  I turned towards Billy and said “What if we meet the mother?”  He said that he didn’t that they would do that because it was not the premise of the show.  I became convinced that they would, making a mental note to tune in and see for myself.

Flash forward to last night.  I laughed while Robin and Barney used a familiar move (the engagement ring in the champagne) to break-up an irritating couple, only later to learn that it brought them together.  My eyes widened when I found out that Lilly and Marshall were moving to Italy (they can’t move!), but was happy to learn that Marshall received a job offer to be a Judge (did we know he would end up as a judge?  I didn’t) and they would be staying.  The biggest shock – or so I thought – was that Ted was moving to Chicago because he was heartbroken over Robin and Barney’s wedding.  I thought that Lilly would have told the gang or tried to stop him, but she didn’t.  At the end of the episode, she helps Ted with his luggage.  Ted says that he needs to leave Sunday night and Lilly asks how he’s going to get back to the city.  Ted says he’ll have to take the train.  The hairs on my arms stood up and I knew.

In the next scene we see a pair of woman’s legs and the bottom of a guitar case.  The legs are walking but stop for an instant, revealing the bottom of an umbrella.  A yellow umbrella.  The umbrella that we all know to be the mother’s.  We see the legs moving again and I held my breath.  Then, we see her at a ticket window.  “One ticket to Far Hampton, please,” she says.  This is the mother.  Ted will never move to Chicago because he’ll meet her on his way back from Far Hampton – and, as we know, he doesn’t wait three days to call her, he calls her right away. 

I was speechless, but inside I was screaming “Yes! Finally!”  Then I called my boyfriend and practically shouted into the phone.  He didn’t seem that excited about it, but I certainly was.  I have been waiting eight years for this moment and it was better than anything I could have imagined.  I will spend the summer catching up on (purchasing) the seasons that I have not seen completely, as I anxiously await what I feel will be the best season ever.  The secret is out and the series may almost be over, but the story has only just begun.