43 MORE TO GO
THE POSTMISTRESS
By Sarah Blake
Well, I got this book from the public library based on a review I'd read in a magazine. The reviewer couldn't say enough about how amazing the book was ... what an incredible thread of love and loss and angst was woven throughout it. How it spanned the decades ... blah, blah, blah. By the amount of holds on the book at the library (seven by the time I got on the list), I was sure this was going to be another THE HELP experience.
I was slightly disappointed ... slightly.
These days, if a book doesn't grab me at the very beginning, I'm hopelessly lost ... deemed "asleep in 30 minutes -- max!" Sadly, the beginning didn't grab me, and I fought to stay engaged through most of the first half of the book.
I could blame part of that on the fact that in the midst of the book, I was also (and continue to do so) reading horribly dry and boring grad school books on hideously dull subjects like leadership and skill sets and policy theories. Yuck, right?
Fast forward to last night, when I said to my cat, "Come hell or high water, I'm finishing this book tonight." To which she looked at me and seemed to be saying with her eyes, "Yeah right."
Okay, so I fell asleep. But I finished it this morning.
I will say that the second half of the book is much better than the first half, and it's in the second half of the book that the meat of the story comes alive. Yes, The Postmistress is a book about war, and interestingly enough, this particular story, while set in the days leading up to America's involvement in WWII, this story spans the breadth of war, and it causes you to make connections between the wars of today and those that my grandfather and great-uncles fought.
Incidentally, I just watched a KET (Kentucky Educational Television) broadcast of "Oh, Saigon," which was a documentary shot by the daughter of Vietnamese refugees now living in Louisville, I do believe (http://www.ohsaigon.com/). It was heart-breaking in it's clarity of exactly the sorts of decisions people are forced to make in the midst of the ugliness of war ... decisions people would never make in any other time of their lives ... and I couldn't help but draw many parallels between the book and the documentary.
At the end of the book, there is a note from the author that explains how she came upon the idea for this book, and I have to say, they weren't at all the circumstances I thought would have spurned her to create these characters. Taking her idea development into account with the closing paragraphs of the book, I can say that while it wasn't like my THE HELP experience, it ended on a good note.
Therefore, I am recommending the book.
By Sarah Blake
Well, I got this book from the public library based on a review I'd read in a magazine. The reviewer couldn't say enough about how amazing the book was ... what an incredible thread of love and loss and angst was woven throughout it. How it spanned the decades ... blah, blah, blah. By the amount of holds on the book at the library (seven by the time I got on the list), I was sure this was going to be another THE HELP experience.
I was slightly disappointed ... slightly.
These days, if a book doesn't grab me at the very beginning, I'm hopelessly lost ... deemed "asleep in 30 minutes -- max!" Sadly, the beginning didn't grab me, and I fought to stay engaged through most of the first half of the book.
I could blame part of that on the fact that in the midst of the book, I was also (and continue to do so) reading horribly dry and boring grad school books on hideously dull subjects like leadership and skill sets and policy theories. Yuck, right?
Fast forward to last night, when I said to my cat, "Come hell or high water, I'm finishing this book tonight." To which she looked at me and seemed to be saying with her eyes, "Yeah right."
Okay, so I fell asleep. But I finished it this morning.
I will say that the second half of the book is much better than the first half, and it's in the second half of the book that the meat of the story comes alive. Yes, The Postmistress is a book about war, and interestingly enough, this particular story, while set in the days leading up to America's involvement in WWII, this story spans the breadth of war, and it causes you to make connections between the wars of today and those that my grandfather and great-uncles fought.
Incidentally, I just watched a KET (Kentucky Educational Television) broadcast of "Oh, Saigon," which was a documentary shot by the daughter of Vietnamese refugees now living in Louisville, I do believe (http://www.ohsaigon.com/). It was heart-breaking in it's clarity of exactly the sorts of decisions people are forced to make in the midst of the ugliness of war ... decisions people would never make in any other time of their lives ... and I couldn't help but draw many parallels between the book and the documentary.
At the end of the book, there is a note from the author that explains how she came upon the idea for this book, and I have to say, they weren't at all the circumstances I thought would have spurned her to create these characters. Taking her idea development into account with the closing paragraphs of the book, I can say that while it wasn't like my THE HELP experience, it ended on a good note.
Therefore, I am recommending the book.
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