Sarah > Recent Status Updates

1970's feminist novel now back in print and deservedly so. A look into womens mental health and agency over their own lives of our moms generation, before we had today's knowledge and vocabulary. I cannot put this down.

"after all this time what I had assumed was real about my life had turned out to be a mask and a charade, a play in which I performed, admirably on rare occasions, but without truth."

"This is the impossible draw of the wilderness: even to enter it is to denature it in some way
And thus we fixate on this unattainable beauty, paint it, map it, celebrate it, fight for it - or the idea of it. For it to remain a true wilderness, a pure wilderness, unsullied by chainsaws or territorial claims, it must remain always slightly out of reach." p11

"Not everyone should go to college, but Lion wished that anyone who did could experience the exquisite pleasure of learning for its own sake. Getting a degree merely to get a job could not be the sole purpose of higher education." p413

"John looked across the table at his wife. More than anything Helen had wanted to have her whole family with her tonight. It was hard to believe they were together like this. This felt like their old life. The special meals, the relaxed joyfulness, and all of them safe. He had forgotten what it was like not to feel dread and worry about how they would get by. Helen looked light enough to float above them." p265

So good! I am completely invested with these characters.

"In a failed love affair, anger, pride, and eventually new love interests may salve the wound. A friendship denied or severed can hurt more: I know you like me, and I like you too; only, I choose not to make room for you in my life." Ouch!

"All artists aspire to be seen, admired, envied, even, maligned. Few succeed; fewer will be remimagined after they die. There are more living giants than dead ones, more forgotten giants than remembered ones."

RIP Ms. Steinem

"When it came to me, Mrs Roy taught me how to think, then raged against my thoughts. She taught me to be free and raged against my freedom. She taught me to write and resented the author I became."

"I had a moment when I was reading the letter again thinking about all the letters we have exchanged - those boxes in my closet! - and thinking how if we pieced them back together we would have a massive decades-long tale to tell. Probably boring to anyone other than ourselves." p 153

This novel is far from boring and has me thinking of letters I've saved over the decades. Loving this on audiobook!

"The response was abysmal: warnings, awareness narcan kits. Perhaps enough to spare the life of the casual user or the weekend partier. But inexcusably blind to the underpinnings of addiction, the realities of homelessness, and the decades of oppression blanketing the streets of Vancouver."

"... like an invisible skein of spider silk that this is a life familiar to them both, from back then, from before. It is their original map: the rising at dawn. the baking of bread, the milking of beasts the tilling of soil, the gathering of eggs. One eye on the weather at all times the other on the land or the youngers or the fire."

"Maps can be read for many things - geography both natural and man-made - and Tomás made sure that the Great Hunger was inscribed on his drafts and in his name books, that it was recorded, in symbols and writing, that its effects and scars would be seen, its evidence and testimony unmissable, for all time."

“The people of Gaza were once known for their honour. Now they force us to play victims. Now they force us to perform our suffering. This is what charity demands of us: humiliation. This is how the most honourable people are broken, one act at a time.”

“What about the life in which they were good to one another and therefore good to us, all of us good together. I would have liked to have seen that.”

“We’re like all the Victor Hugo novels put together. An anthology of great woes, small joys and hopes.”

“Why do books attract us the way people do? Why are we drawn to covers like we are to a look, a voice that seems familiar, heard before, a voice that diverts us from our path, makes us look up, attracts our attention, and could change the course of our life.”

“No one ever says that you can die from having been too fed up, too often.”