I promise it won't always hurt like this; Things in Nature merely grow

 I promise it won't always hurt like this - Clare Mackintosh says it all. Her words resonate, her grief is familiar even if her anger is not, and her initial inability to cope, followed by her learning to grow into her grief could easily be my story. A very good book, one that I hope to go back to someday soon. 

Things in Nature merely grow -  Yiyun Li
This book on grief is by a mother who lost two sons, in an identical manner a few years apart. It is a book about radical acceptance, and about an abyss that is very familiar to me. 

Book Club for Troublesome Wonen

There are so many ways one can write, and then can also add sequels to, a book about a book clip. One can keep adding characters and  have different things happening in their lives. This particular book by Marie Bostwick is written beautifully. It starts off a bit vague but then as she builds up the characters, especially the character of Margaret, it becomes interesting, and then adding this whole bit about the politics of the day makes it even more interesting. Very readable book and I've highlighted a few of the names of books which I would like to read based on what the Bettys in the book club in the book were reading.

Goldfinch

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff 

"Lauren Groff’s audacious novel, Fates and Furies, is an astounding portrait of a marriage. With all the elements of Greek Tragedy, Mathilde escapes her dreadful childhood when she marries Lotto, who believes his destiny is to fill the Great American Artist archetype. In “Fates” we are seduced by Mathilde’s and Lotto’s inspiring union, but the “two sides of every story” trope is never truer than in a marriage. “Furies” reveals Mathilde’s tempestuous rage boiling beneath the surface." - https://www.nationalbook.org/books/fates-and-furies/

The para above says it well so I will not write a separate review.

14/03/23 

Finished the Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

- The book is about a young boy who survives a bomb attack at the MOMA in New York. He leaves the Museum with a valuable painting and the gold ring given to him by a dying victim (some lovely descriptions there). For some reason he does not tell anyone about the painting, and while that was understandable, what was inexplicable was the sudden anxiety about it in the middle of the book. The book became really gripping while describing his life with his abusive father and his (the father's) girlfriend but lost me somewhere after that. I couldn't fathom why he started cheating and duping people when his life was taking a turn for the better, with a loving guardian and a possible girlfriend. I didn't stay with the book long enough to find out what happened at the end, but something surely went awry with the plot.

Glad it was a library book and not something I purchased.

Why we kneel how we rise

 Why we kneel how we rise - Michael Holding - written with so much grace and dignity, even when writing about how human beings can really be horrible to one another. Has some very illuminating interviews with other celebrities and their experience of racism.

Nothing was the same

 Nothing was the same - a memoir by Kay Redfield Jamison - a very moving memoir of how marriage to an absolutely wonderful man helped the author battle and overcome her manic depression. A beautiful description of grief and how one learns to live with it. Definitely a book to keep going back to. More than anything, it is an amazing love story

Accabadora

 Accabadora by Michela Miguela - found this on Ellena Ferrante's selection of favourite books by women - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/21/elena-ferrante-names-her-40-favourite-books-by-female-authors?utm_source=pocket_mylist  - its a lovely story of the love between an elderly caretaker for the dying and a young girl who is left in her care. The young girl grows up learning to understand and accept choices made by Bonaria.

Travelling with pomegranates Sue Monk Kidd

Ann Kidd Taylor and Sue Monk Kidd 

Travelling with pomegranates is very readable, with alternate chapters written by the mother and the daughter. very interesting to see the 2 very different perspectives to the same event/s. They travel through Greece, Italy and Spain during an important phase in their lives, and the descriptions of the places they visit are very vivid.

An interesting takeaway is that the apple in the Garden of Eden could have actually been a pomegranate, as that was a fruit available even in those times in the Middle East, where the birth of Christ and Christianity is said to have occurred. . It is also considered a fertility symbol