The Aviator’s Wife – Melanie Benjamin

The Aviator’s Wife is a historical novel, but I think the best way to describe it is as a fictional memoir or fictional autobiography. The book starts with college senior Anne Morrow, and concludes near the end of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s public life. It is a fascinating exploration of an incredibly famous marriage and woman.

This book is through the eyes of Anne Morrow Lindbergh. She is a fascinating character. She is the daughter of an ambassador and Smith’s president and she is highly educated. From a social perspective, superior to the farm-raised Charles Lindbergh – her higher education attainment is an issues at points in their marriage. She strives to be his perfect wife, while feeling conflicted about their life and choices.

It’s fascinating reading this book and seeing Anne as she grows from low-self esteem college student to nervous bride and mother, to the tragic Mother of the Lindbergh Baby to finally being in a place where she has agency over her life.

This book could easily be construed as an incredibly unsympathetic take on Charles Lindbergh, but I don’t think that would be fully accurate. By all accounts, Charles Lindbergh was a difficult man. He was charismatic and domineering and held some really screwed up opinions that nevertheless had support at the time. But he is still given sympathy in this piece, even as he is portrayed a self-centered, controlling man. The end, where he is seen to be carrying around a picture of the son he never fully mourned, is especially poignant.

I really enjoyed this book. Though Anne Morrow Lindbergh had many independent accomplishments, including bestselling author and the first woman to hold a first-class glider’s license, she is always overshadowed by her husband. Even her Wikipedia entry is focused on her husband, taking more space to describe his affairs and illegitimate children than it does to describe her children. In reality, she was a complex woman who balanced the demands of being a public wife with being a person with her own aspirations.

The House Girl – Tara Conklin

I wasn’t kidding about my going through phases – after a long list of YA and middle grade books, I have a couple historical fiction reviews coming.

I found The House Girl by Tara Conklin on Goodreads. I was a little wary for a while. Sometimes you’re reading for escapism and you don’t want to deal with heavy social issues. But a couple weeks ago the eBook went on sale through HarperCollins Bookperks and figured it was time to pick it up.

This book alternates narration between Lina (a New York lawyer looking for a slave reparations plaintiff), Josephine Bell (a slave who may or may not be a famous artist), and Dorothea (daughter of an underground railroad conductor). Their stories are woven together throughout the book. Lina’s artist father introduces her to Lu Ann Bell’s art, which may actually be Josephine’s. In her research, Lina finds Dorothea’s letters to her sister describing a runaway slave whom Lina believes to be Josephine. The story is layered and complex, and many issues of the legacy of slavery are explored.

The first three-quarters or so of this book I loved.The characters are built beautifully. Lina’s relationship with her father is at times tender and tense. Josephine’s feelings for LuAnn are torturous. Dorothea is captivating as she realizes the depth of her convictions. The ending of the book, though, left much to be desired.

SPOILERS BELOW

In a twist I saw coming from a mile away, Lina’s mother is not dead: she actually left the family when Lina was a toddler. This bombshell is dropped in the middle of Lina and Oscar finally talking about her mother in depth for the first time since she “died.” But then, the book doesn’t really go anywhere with it. There’s a little bit of Lina being shocked, but beyond that there’s nothing. This woman just found out her mother was alive and wanted to contact her, and had little reaction. Similarly, Lina and Oscar have a complicated relationship through the book, where they are close yet Lina knows little of his life outside of her. Their relationship evolves throughout the book and matures but then at a turning point is just left to sit.

I feel the characters in this book deserve more. Does the world know that the paintings were Josephine’s? What happens to Lina’s relationship with her parents? There are too many loose ends. Loose ends can be done well: Lina’s career after leaving the firm is a loose end that is done well. These just feel like the author for some reason didn’t want to give resolution.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I know I am basically the last person on the planet to read this book, let alone book blogger, but I read TFIOS in one afternoon and, unsurprisingly, the feels. Also, spoilers. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I have been avoiding reading this book ever since it came out, for a couple reasons. I had read Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns a couple years ago. They were pretty good, standard YA fare, but I didn’t see what the huge fuss was about John Green. I like his YouTube videos but I just didn’t see why he was supposed to be the messiah of YA. I still don’t. However, after reading this book I definitely see why he is so popular. It was head and shoulders above his previous work and just really good YA fiction.

I was also avoiding reading it because I knew it was heartbreaking and there were cancer kids, so I pretty much knew someone was going to die and I just didn’t want to deal with that.

Now, I have finally read it in the span of three hours. There isn’t much I could say about this book that hasn’t already been said. Green humanizes teenagers with cancer in ways many authors haven’t. He makes a concerted effort to go against inspiration porn and the saintly, asexual view we have of illness, and I think he is successful.

I loved Hazel because she was at the end of the day just a teenager. She loves trashy TV, has crushes, likes the mall, and she doesn’t want you to burden her with expectations of her behavior. She knows when she is being condescended to and is pissed off about it. Though her illness and dealing with that illness is obviously a large part of her character, it doesn’t define her.

I also loved her parents. That’s a problem I had with My Sister’s Keeper, that the parents were demonized, given one dimension, or saintly at different points in the book. Hazel’s parents were dealing with difficult circumstances, but like Hazel, were regular people.

I did have a few qualms. As sweet as the romance is and as refreshing as it was to have a real cancer kid romance, Augustus was just really pretentious and douchey. Even his name, what 16 year old is named Augustus? In some ways, I think his pretentiousness stems a lot from just being a teenager, but he is still just really pretentious. I think it would have been funnier if Hazel or Isaac called him out on it and it was used for comedic effect instead of everyone gazing adoringly upon his fears of oblivion.

And maybe I just don’t know that much about cancer, but it seems really unbelievable that he would just be covered in mets out of the blue. I’m guessing if you’re a teenage cancer survivor and have only been out of treatment for a few years, they keep you under a close watch and would notice some forming. Or maybe I just know nothing about how cancer works.

Overall, this book was a great way to spend the afternoon, followed by several episodes of Bob’s Burgers to pull me out of my sadness.

A Series of Unfortunate Events: Second Three

Continuing in my Series of Unfortunate Events re-read, I read The Miserable Mill, The Austere Academy, and The Ersatz Elevator. These three start to move away from the more formulaic first three books, where they get a new guardian at the beginning and leave at the end after Olaf has killed him or her.

The Miserable Mill is one of my favorite books in the series because it’s so unexpected. There have been a long list of guardians, and then to suddenly see the Baudelaires in a new setting is refreshing. Sir is fantastic as the evil guardian, with his smoke covered face, gum lunches, and coupon paychecks. In some ways, this book is more sinister than the previous three, with a guardian whose face is never seen, Klaus being hypnotized, and not seeing Olaf until late in the book.

The Austere Academy sees the introduction of the Quagmire triplets, in whom the Baudelaires finally find some friends. This book also contains my personal favorite insult ever: “cake sniffer.” This book is a bit less tense than the previous books, the Baudelaire’s circumstances don’t seem so dire in this installment with the introduction of friends and the school being boring but not deadly. The ending is also refreshing, with new stakes and the first real cliffhanger.

In the third installment of this chunk, The Ersatz Elevator has more world building, with the “In” crowd, Cafe Salmonella, and other details about the city. This series is really interesting because it doesn’t explicitly say where it takes place or when, and it has many similarities to our world but also vast differences. I love the little details giving us more clues to this world the Baudelaire’s live in. Jerome’s ending is heartbreaking, but not at all surprising in the context of the adults in this series.

I’m excited to see the books becoming more complex and rapidly moving toward plot points I have only vague memories of. I’m looking forward to the next seven, which I’ll be posting later this month or next.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I read Jane Eyre for the first time in high school. The only books I had read by 19th century British authors at that point were Jane Austen’s novels, which I think may be why I was underwhelmed by the book. Charlotte Bronte, though covering similar themes, has a different style than Jane Austen. Since then, I’ve read many, many more classics and wanted to give Jane Eyre a second try.

This time around, I loved it. Any story that includes the English Moors, which The Secret Garden introduced me to, is mournful and mysterious. This book is no exception. Jane’s life has been a bit rough. She is an orphan, adopted by family members who don’t want her, sent to a boarding school whose benefactor is harsh and controlling, and then is a governess. She isn’t Oliver Twist, but she isn’t well off either. She takes a position as a governess for a French child who is the ward of an English man but is not his child or relative, in a house where strange things sometimes happen with no explanation.

I loved Jane as a character. She is introspective and insightful. She demands respect from those around her, something that isn’t common in modern fiction let alone 19th century fiction. I think in some ways it’s because she has nothing to lose – her family is already gone, she has no inheritance – but also because her situation has allowed her to be independent. Since she is independent, she sees no reason to accept anything less.

This book examines gender and classism. The men in Jane’s life, starting with Mr. Brocklehurst, try to control her and subjugate her. Brocklehurst tries to instill in her ideas about her place, St. John tries to mold her into a subservient wife, as does Mr. Rochester. She only agrees to marry Mr. Rochester first under the agreement that she will continue to work as a governess, and then when she has independent wealth. She refuses to marry St. John at all. Jane can be a little classist, as evidenced in her description of her new students at her school. She comes to realize, though, that given an education they are as smart and hardworking as their wealthier counterparts.

I’m so glad that I re-read this book. Jane is a fantastic character and the social commentary is timeless.