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Piper Kerman’s Orange Is the New Black

After being introduced to the series airing on Netflix by a friend, and subsequently watching all of season one, I found myself wanting to know more of the story.  I did a little googling, and found out that it was based on the memoir Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman, who served thirteen months of a fifteen-month sentence for a nine-year old drug offense in which she traveled with a suitcase full of money.  If it had been one year later, her case would have been thrown out of court, a fact that we are made aware of both in the memoir and the series.

There was a slight bit of hesitation on my part, on whether or not to purchase the memoir, because I didn’t want to spoil season two, but almost instantly after I started reading it, I realized that that was not going to be the case.  Although the premise in the series runs true to the memoir, there are quite a few differences between the two.

The memoir tells the story of Piper’s experiences at a minimum security prison in Danbury, Connecticut.  While serving time, Piper works in electric and then later in construction, after she was sexually harassed by the prison staff member who was in charge of the electricity department.  She seems to be allowed some freedoms, because she is constantly running on the track.  At times you can almost forget that they are in prison because of such things as that, but that doesn’t last long.  Piper has a ton of support from the outside world, with people all over the country – some she even had never met – sending her books and letters, and visiting her.  Her fiancé Larry makes a point to drive up from New York and visit her once a week.  All of her visits seemed to be pleasant and lasted longer than what I had imagined they would (multiple hours).  At the end of the visits, after the visitors had all left, Piper and the other inmates were forced to strip, even going as far as having to squat and cough to make sure that nothing had been smuggled into the facilities.

Piper did not serve any time with her former girlfriend and ex-drug trafficker, Nora (Alex) while she was at Danbury, of which she was there for eleven months.  For the last two months of her sentence, she boarded Con Air, en-route to Chicago as a star witness for the government against a man who was higher up in the drug smuggling business than she had been; she had never met the guy and didn’t know who he was.  It was there that she ran into Nora and her sister, en-route to the same destination, for the same trial, except that Nora and her sister had actually known who this man was.  At first Piper refused to speak to them, even being seated next to Nora on a long flight without breaking their awkward silence.  Eventually, they become friendly for a little while, until Nora departs on her way back to what we can only assume is the prison where she has been serving her time.

A lot of Piper’s time in prison seems a bit mundane to me.  Perhaps this is because of the views that society imposes upon us of what prison life is supposed to be like, or perhaps it is because the series on Netflix has a bit more drama to it; the Piper in their seems to make more enemies than friends, but in the memoir, it isn’t like that at all.  The reason why she was able to survive came partially from her contacts with the outside world, and partially from the friends that she made on the inside, the women that were service with her.  Orange Is the New Black isn’t just a story about one woman, it’s really a story about all of them, and one that I highly recommend, as I have just loaned out my copy.

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Mary Alice Monroe’s The Summer Girls

No matter where you go in the world, you cannot run away from the people that are close to your heart and the secrets that they keep for you.  In Mary Alice Monroe’s The Summer Girls, we are shown just that with the reunion of three half-sisters Dora, Carson and Harper, at the request of their grandmother, Mamaw, for her eightieth birthday.  All three girls travel to Sullivan’s Island in South Carolina, to their beloved Sea Breeze, in search of a glimpse into the carefree summers of their youth, and rediscover the bonds they once shared with each other.

Dora is a stay-at-home mom, caring for her autistic son, Nate, and facing the start of a divorce from her husband, who claims that she didn’t pay enough attention to him, which was true.  She is obsessed with caring for Nate, who is a smart child, but at the same time isn’t comfortable in group settings and, heartbreaking to Dora, can’t stand to be touched.  Dora lives in South Carolina, under an hour away from Mamaw, and therefore is the only one of the granddaughters that still visits every summer.  She brings Nate to Sullivan’s Island even though the invitation specified that it was a girls’ only weekend, because he husband refused to spend any time with him.  Dora is depressed over the way that her life has turned out and becomes jealous when she sees her son bonding with Carson.

Carson is a photographer living in California who recently lost her job due to the cancelation of the show that she was working on, and is in need of a change of scenery.  Unlike her sisters, Carson grew up a bit differently.  Her mother died in a fire when she was little, which led to her spending a few years with Mamaw at Sea Breeze (the name for Mamaw’s house on Sullivan’s Island) before her father (their father) Parker, came back to claim her and they moved to California.  Carson loves the ocean, and takes out her surfboard whenever she has a chance, until a close encounter with a shark frightens her and she retreats to the bay.  There is a good thing that comes out of the shark though; Carson makes a new friend, a dolphin, whom she names Delphine – which is how she and Nate start to connect a little: the dolphin fascinated him.  Carson starts dating Blake, a marine biologist who works with dolphins, and struggles with the possibility that, like her father, she too may have an addiction to alcohol.

Harper lives in New York with her mother, working at a major trade publisher as her mother’s assistant, describing their work relationship as Andy Sachs and Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada.  Harper’s mother was displeased that she had decided to go to Sullivan’s Island, making it clear that she was only to be gone for one weekend.  After a phone call between the two, Harper decides to quit her job – further angering her mother – and stay for the duration of the summer.

From the beginning, Mamaw seems like she is hiding something, that this visit with her granddaughters is more than what it seems.  She unearths family secrets – mainly of Parker – that had long been buried, which threaten to pull them even further apart than they already had become…but will they be able to resurrect their strong bonds in order to move forward together?

The Summer Girls is a great novel for the end of the summer season, because throughout it, you get a sense that something is fleeting, life as each of these characters knows it is fleeting, and I feel like that sense that something is fleeting is felt around this time of the year.  The carefree days of summer are fading and the winter is on the horizon, moving towards us faster than we would like.  Monroe brings us back to the beginning of the summer season, where the hopes and anticipation still exist, and, as this is the first book in a trilogy that is set to revolve around these characters, it is only the beginning.

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Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak

In Laurie Halse Anderson’s YA novel, Speak, we are introduced to the character of Melinda, and follow her through her first year of high school.  Normally a time where teenagers start on the quest of “finding themselves,” Melinda’s freshman year is anything but that.  Still trying to get a grasp on events from what was supposed to be an innocent summer party where she called the police then fled, Melinda starts off the school year with no friends – they’re all furious at her for the police and don’t understand/know the situation (she didn’t tell a soul) – and in a state of depression.  She befriends the new girl, Heather, who has no knowledge of the past summer, only to have the friendship thrown in her face partway through the year, when Heather becomes involved in a popular clique.

As the school year goes by, Melinda’s grades slip more and more, and she retreats into herself, ending up speaking as little as possible which frustrates her parents and teachers.  Melinda cannot run away from the thoughts inside her own head that keep her silent, and it seems that everywhere she goes, she cannot get away from the one person that is the cause of all of her pain: he’s everywhere.  The only place where she seems to open up is in her art class, but is that enough to bring her back to life and save her?

Speak is not just a book for adolescence.  It’s really a book for all ages that everyone should read because it can mean different things to different people.  It can help a parent whose child suddenly becomes withdrawn, allowing them to notice signs for help.  It can help a teenager (or anyone who is being abused or was abused) to recognize that it wasn’t their fault, but also, that they themselves cannot stay silent, they have to speak in order for their cries to be heard and in order to start healing.

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Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Forever Interrupted

“’I love you Elsie Porter Ross,’ he says, and he bends down to the couch to kiss me.  He is wearing a bike helmet and bike gloves.  He grins at me. ‘I really love the sound of that.’”

 

Three pages into Taylor Jenkins Reid’s debut novel, Forever Interrupted, and it looks as if Ben and Elsie have the rest of their lives in front of them.  They were married less than two weeks ago and seem deliriously happy, the kind of couple that is meant-to-be.  By the end of that same page however, Elsie is running barefoot in the street to the sound of sirens, and Ben’s body is being placed into an ambulance, Fruity Pebbles scattered in the street.  He had gone out to get them for Elsie and was hit by a truck a block away from home.  At the hospital Elsie meets her mother-in-law, Susan, for the first time…a woman who didn’t even know she existed.  Their relationship starts off rocky – Susan can’t understand why her son had never told her about Elsie – but after a while they both realize just how much they need each other in order to heal, or, at least, to start healing.

The story alternates every few chapters from the six months that Elsie and Ben were dating to Elsie dealing with the grief of Ben’s death.  At times her grief is so overpowering that it leaves you in tears – okay, more than half of the time…I cried a lot while reading this.  Why read it then?  Because, simply put, it is amazing; I honestly could not put it down.  For all of the sad points of Elsie’s grieving it really is worth it…an unconventional love story of sorts.  At one side you have Elsie and Ben.  You get to watch their love story unfold – see their chance meeting over takeout pizza one rainy night, their first date where Ben caught Elsie trying to break into her house, how they were moved in together and married after only six months of knowing each other.  Then you have Elsie and Susan.  At first Susan seems mean and unreasonable (understandably), but she has more in common with Elsie than either of them realize.  She also is one of my favorite characters; she is stronger than she knows.  It’s a shame that it took Ben dying for them to meet (his reasons are valid…sort of), but something tells me that was the way it was supposed to be.  Elsie needed a mother figure in her life, someone to love her having not been close to her parents, and Susan needed to be needed since both her husband and son were no longer alive.

I really loved Forever Interrupted, and there’s a good chance that I pick it up again soon.  Perhaps the second time around I will cry a little less, then again, perhaps not.  I leave you with a quote (because I love quotes).  It is from a conversation between Elsie and Susan.  Elsie had just gotten home from jail for punching someone at work.  Her friend Ana had called Susan and brought Elsie home.  Susan got there and Elsie started crying and fell apart, and this was Susan’s advice, right before she suggested that Elsie come spend time at her house to grieve.  I thought it was very powerful…and it still brings me to tears reading it.

 

“…you have to find a way to remember him and forget him.  You have to find a way to keep him in your heart and in your memories but do something else with your life.  Your life cannot be about my son.  It can’t.”

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Lauren Weisberger’s Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns

Rarely have I found a sequel to be as entertaining, or capture as much energy as the original book that inspired it.  More often than not, the author tries in vain to achieve the same level of perfection, but never quite reaches it.  Thankfully, the latter cannot be said of Lauren Weisberger’s Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns, the long awaited sequel to her 2003 novel The Devil Wears Prada, based on her experience of working as an assistant to Vogue’s Anna Wintour (published June 4, 2013, by Simon & Schuster).  In the ten-year interim, she has written three other novels (of which I may check out quite soon), but really, Revenge is what we (fans of both the novel and subsequent film) have been waiting for.

Interestingly enough, Revenge is set ten years after The Devil Wears Prada (coincidence? I think not!), bringing back Andrea “Andy” Sachs, Emily Charlton and Miranda Priestly.  It opens on the morning of Andy’s wedding to the handsome Max Harrison – who comes from a family of stature, but has recently experienced some financial setbacks – and she is best friends with Emily – which is odd, but somehow they have a good dynamic.  Andy and Emily founded and head a high-end wedding magazine together, called The Plunge (what Runway is to the fashion world), of which is how Andy met Max in the first place; he was a friend of Emily’s husband Miles (yes, Emily is actually married, although there is talk throughout the novel of Miles’ play-boy ways), and was at the party that Andy and Emily threw to get investors three years prior.

All that being said, Andy is awoken on the morning of her wedding from a nightmare, where she was still working as Miranda’s assistant and going crazy trying to meet her impossible demands.  She is comforted briefly by Max who snuck in to see her, only to become paralyzed with shock upon the discovery of a letter to Max from his mother Barbara, begging him not to go through with the wedding, just moments before having to walk down the aisle.

From that day forward, Andy’s life is never the same.  Miranda begins courting Andy and Emily in hopes of purchasing The Plunge.  We see a softer, “almost human” side of her as she tries to woo the girls into giving her what she wants, which, we all know is just a formality, because no one says no to Miranda.  Emily is thrilled and ready to sign the magazine away, except Andy doesn’t want to sell for a few reasons, one being that there’s a clause in the contract that states that the editorial staff stays on for at least a year after the acquisition…and Andy does not want to work for Miranda again.  Andy also has things going on in her personal life, she becomes a mother, and she crosses paths with her ex-boyfriend Alex, the one who broke her heart not too long after she quit working for Miranda, the one whom she still obsesses about…the one who got away.

This is where Revenge matches up to The Devil Wears Prada.  The extravagant parties and fashion are still there, the anxiety of Miranda is still there – Miranda is still there, which, as we all know makes the book; she’s the character that you love to hate – and over the course of one evening, Andy learns that no one is who they seem to be, not her husband Max, not Emily…and she will have to decide whether to leave her life behind completely and start over, or stay in a life where she might never have a chance at true happiness.

Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns may feature Andy as a wife, mother, entrepreneur…it answers our question of what happened to her after she cursed out Miranda in Paris and left the job “a million girls would die for” at Runway, but at the same time, it’s nice to know that she hasn’t changed all that much, she’s still the same naïve woman that we empathized with ten years earlier.  I’m not sure if this needs to be turned into a series, but it would be nice if Revenge was optioned for a film…with the same case of course.

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Gemma Burgess’ Brooklyn Girls

A few weeks ago, my friend Melissa told me about a book that she was obsessed with and wanted me to read once she was finished.  I was unsure if I would get into it because it didn’t quite seem like my type of book – my boyfriend has accused me of being a book snob – but I’ve recently been trying to expand my “narrow field,” so I decided to give it a try.

Gemma Burgess’ third book, Brooklyn Girls, is about five women (Pia, Julie, Angie, Coco and Madeline) in their early twenties, just starting on life after college, trying not only to make it in the world (living independently without help from their parents), but also, trying to figure out who they really are and what they’re interested in.  It is the first book in a series of the same name (the second book, Love and Chaos is due out winter 2014), told through the eyes of Pia.  Pia is a bit spoiled; her parents have paid her way through life and gotten her out of trouble numerous times, but when she loses her job in a PR agency after only being there for a week because of a drunken night (her father had gotten her that job), her parents take action.  They cut her off completely, not even sending any money for rent, and give her an ultimatum: if she doesn’t make something of herself in two months, they were going to take her back to Zurich with them.  This results in Pia trying out different, sometimes eccentric jobs, none of which seem to be going anywhere for her, until, while visiting the Brooklyn Flea, she comes up with the idea to launch a health-food food truck which she calls SkinnyWheels.  The question is, how will she get the money to pay for it? 

From violent loan sharks, drunk roommates and bonding over shared experiences, to an ex that she can’t get over (it’s been four years) and a guy she may miss out on, Pia spends her possible last two months of freedom in chaos, but having a blast (most of the time).  She reminds me a bit of Carrie Bradshaw from Sex & the City – likeable, but has those cringe worthy moments where you just want to tell her to stop, take a step back and think first.

What I find particularly funny about this book is that the characters live in a part of Brooklyn that I know well, they walk down the same streets that I do, go to places that I’ve either gone to or know about.  Many times when I read a book, it takes place either somewhere that I’ve never been or somewhere that I’ve never heard of.  I feel like it makes the characters that much more relatable with them running around in your own backyard.  Also, by reading about Pia and her roommates, this book makes you take a look at your own life and reevaluate it.  Are you exactly where you want to be?  Are there any improvements that you could make to your carrier or life?  Are you out of control running around drunk and doing drugs like Pia’s roommate and best friend Angie, cab surfing on the Brooklyn Bridge? 

The next novel in this series takes on the perspective of Angie, which I feel will be quite interesting, and Melissa and I will be reading it.

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Amy Hatvany’s Heart Like Mine

Have you ever stumbled onto a situation that wasn’t part of your plan, and had to make the choice of whether to venture off course risking everything, or stick with your original path and always wonder what could have been?  This is the case in Amy Hatvany’s Heart Like Mine, where the reader is introduced to Grace, Ava and Kelli in a trio of alternating narrations, and taken on a journey which will forever change all of their lives.  At times, heartbreaking, Heart Like Mine is the kind of book that touches your heart in ways that you wouldn’t think possible.  It makes you think about your own choices in life and whether they were the right ones for you.

Grace is a woman who works with a foundation that helps battered women make new lives for themselves; it was a career that she stumbled upon while doing volunteer work and she loves it.  But like many of us, Grace had a plan for her life, which didn’t include kids, which is why when she began dating Victor – a divorcé with two kids – she hesitated, but not for long.  For the most part, Victor’s kids lived with their mother, Kelli, spending every other weekend with him, something that Grace felt that she could deal with.  She and Victor move in together, get engaged, and for a brief moment everything is perfect.  Less than a week after their engagement, the unthinkable happens: Kelli dies.  Her death leaves Victor and the kids distraught as they try to cope with what happened, and Grace ultimately needs to choose.  Does she love Victor enough to stay with him and his kids and be able to help them in their time of need, or does she need to let go?

Ava is Victor and Kelli’s thirteen year old daughter who, ever since her dad had left a few years back, has been taking care of her unstable mom and helping with household chores that a girl of her age shouldn’t have to do.  She tolerates Grace, but at the same time wishes that her parents would get back together.  When she finds out that Kelli is dead, Ava’s world is crushed.  She has to permanently move out of the only home she’s ever known, and she resents Grace because she is alive whereas her mother is not.  But, the hardest thing of all is that everything that Kelli had told Ava about her past starts unraveling, and slowly Ava learns the truth: Kelli was not who she thought she was.  Ultimately, Ava needs to decide if she can let go of the mom she thought she had and accept Kelli for who she actually was.  She also needs to figure out if she can let go enough of Kelli to let Grace in, or be the catalyst to drive her away.

Kelli, is the mother to Ava and Max, and ex-wife to Victor.  Despite problems that she and Victor had, and despite the fact that they haven’t been together for the past few years, she still held onto hope that he would come back to her…until Victor told her of his engagement to Grace.  Kelli was devastated by the news, yes, but was it enough to put her over the edge?  Since Kelli dies not to long after, most of her character is narrated from her adolescence up until the time of her death.  As we travel with Kelli along her short journey, things from her past emerge and shed light on her as an adult and why she behaved the way that she did – the most shocking of which Kelli didn’t even see coming.  She always knew that she had been abandoned by the people who were supposed to love her the most, but she finds out that there is a possibility that they may have betrayed her as well.

If you were put into a similar situation, how would you react?  Would you try to do the right thing even if it was not in your plan?  Take Grace, she had just started getting used to the idea that she was going to be a part-time step mom, only to be thrown completely into parenting…and not only that, parenting kids – Ava specifically – who made it especially difficult for her to do so.  Ava is horrible to Grace, stealing from her, screaming at her, lying to Victor, and at least once or twice telling Grace that she hated her.  It’s not that Grace was replacing Kelli, because that is not what Grace wanted at all, but at the same time you can kind of understand where Ava is coming from as well.  Her plan was not to tragically lose her mom and be raised by someone else, and because she is only thirteen her behavior is partially excused.  Although she does not come across as the most sympathetic character at times, losing a parent isn’t easy, and that in turn makes you feel for her.  All Kelli ever wanted out of life was to be loved by someone.  She was estranged from her parents, divorced from her husband, and only had one real friend – and the one thing that she loved the most, the thing that she didn’t know existed although always longed for, could have kept her from going over the edge of despair and possibly have been her hold in the realm of happiness.

Heart Like Mine shows the different types of love that we can experience in our lives, the ones that have always been with us, the ones that we’ve always wanted, and the ones that we didn’t know existed but that ultimately were found to be essential us.  It shows us that life is more precious than we realize, and at any second someone that we deeply care about can be taken away from us, but it also hopefully helps people who find themselves in similar situations (Grace) know that they are not alone, and that things will get better over time.  You can feel the loss of someone deeply, but in order for anyone to keep on living, you have to move on to a point.  Perhaps if Kelli had been able to do that she would have lived a longer and happier life.  This was my first time reading Hatvany’s writing.  I think that she did a wonderful job and I would not hesitate to pick up another one.

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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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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.

Posted on by saraelizabeth419

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.”