I'm still reading!

I just finished another book. Here's an interesting process I went through to find this book.

I had read a review of A Widower's Tale by Julia Glass and it sounded intriguing, so I found it at the library. At that time I noted that she had written Three Junes.  I remember buying Three Junes and then having a really hard time getting in to it, in fact I couldn't even remember if I had finished it.

This gave me pause. So while at the shelf I see she has written I See You Everywhere

and I check that out also.

You may be able to predict where this is going, I couldn't get in to A Widower's Tale. I tried and I tried, but it didn't resonate with me on any level. I felt badly. And isn't that stupid? To feel badly you can't relate to an inanimate object? (I definitely need therapy.)

Well, I managed to console myself with the recollection of Three Junes. Maybe I just wasn't in to this author's style of writing and there are about twenty million books out there, perhaps another would be a better choice. And should I waste my precious reading time on this one?

However I wanted to read right at this very minute and I did have a book right at my fingertips, so I started on I See You Everywhere and I couldn't put it down. I loved it. I love the characters, two sisters. I love the vocabulary, I had to use a dictionary, I loved the writing style (one character's viewpoint, then another) and I felt so in touch with these women. (NY Times Book Review here)

I was redeemed! Maybe I could read Julia Glass after all! But my point, yes there is one, to this whole conversation is that how interesting that I couldn't relate to two of her books. Is it style? Is it topic? Is it that point in time in the universe for either her or me? Who knows, but it is interesting to contemplate.

And I don't mean to be morbid here, but I did love this passage on p. 276 -

"As we grow older, however, our tragedies diminish in their grandeur. Not to us, not personally but in what my father would call the cosmic scheme of things. Because tragedy, like a rare dark flower gone to see, proliferates all about us. Your boss succumbs to lymphoma. One friend has a stillbirth, another loses an eye. Someone's parents plummet off a cliff while driving on vacation in Scotland. Another friend's sister-in-law, the mother of a newborn baby, drops dead on a treadmill at the gym. You begin to understand that there are no quotas for hard knocks. It's not, alas, like you've used up your allotted share. You're simply growing older and this is how it is. One day you're no longer hearing 'Oh my God I can't believe it!' You're hearing 'These things happen' and 'There but for the grace of God.' And the terrible things that befell you first of all? Old news, background noise, forgotten headlines. To everyone else."


There is tragedy in life. And I don't want it. Just like I want to pick up a book and read it cover to cover and love it, I want life to be wonderful, birth to a very, very, long, healthy ending. I didn't anticipate the hurt, the anger, the injustice of tragedy. I didn't anticipate the the purpose of death in life.

This book is not about death, so don't not pick it up if I'm giving you the impression it's going to be sad. It's sad at the end, but richer for the beginning and the middle.

And maybe after all, that's representative of life, no matter the length.