coming of age – Page 4

Great Expectations

2008/03/022010/01/20 gr4c5Leave a comment

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Believe it or not, I had never read this before. Not in high school, not in college, not in fun. Go figure. It’s a classic which translated (back in the day) into the assumption of being boring. It was written in 1861 which translated into practically a foreign language (ekerval?). All that translated into me being narrow minded. Great Expectations is wonderful. It opens with Pip (our young main character) encountering an escaped convict in a field. The convict threatens bodily harm if Pip can’t produce some food and, of course, a file. Why was Pip targeted? His brother-in-law is a blacksmith. Of course he is going to have instruments strong enough to tackle something like…leg irons. So, it starts out pretty exciting and not at all unrealizable.

Here are some of my (early) favorite quotes from Pip’s life with his sister and her husband, Joe:
“She concluded by throwing me – I often served as a connubial missle- at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me onto the chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great leg” (p 7).
“My sister having much to do, was going to church vicariously; that is to say, Joe and I were going” (p 20). While Pip’s sister is seen as cruel I cannot help but find humor in both these passages.
After Pip decides to become a gentleman he makes an observation that struck me: “So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise” (p 206). Estrella, his love interest, has another observation akin to Pip’s: “I’ll tell you what real love is…It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter…! (p 227).

The LibraryThing review:
“A classic from Charles Dickens. All of the characters are so well developed that the reader cannot help but drawn into their individual plots. From Pip, the blacksmith apprentice turned gentleman in the making (and the hero of our story) to Miss Havisham, a wealthy woman locked away in self-induced seclusion. “

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust and the chapter “A Dickens of a Tale” (p 72). It’s funny that Pearl laments about Dickens having to be a high school mandatory read that students had to “choke down” because many of the reviews I have read recently about Great Expectations mention having to read it in this manner.

Allegra Maud Goldman

2007/05/312010/01/19 gr4c5Leave a comment

Allegra Konecky, Edith. Allegra Maud Goldman. New York: The Feminist Press, 1990.

This was another one of those “kid books” – about a kid coming of age, I should say. I enjoyed this much better than the Angus book. Both have witty, sarcastic, growing up girl narratives only Allegra is Jewish instead of Catholic and lives in Brooklyn, New York instead of England. She isn’t afraid to use her mind, or speak it. A few of my favorite quotes:

“Just thinking about that whole library filled with ideas, things to mull over , all sorts of new people to get to know, boggled my mind.” (p88)

“”You’ll never be really happy as a woman,” Sonia said “until you have your own sweet baby at your breast.” I recognized this as something her mother was always saying to her, but I refrained from throwing up.” (p145)

I enjoyed this book a great deal. Allegra Maud Goldman is my kind of kid. Her sense of humor stands up and takes a bow in the face if that audience called insecurity that only growing up can produce.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter appropriately called, “Girls Growing up” (p 101). Pearl liked Allegra as much as I did saying, “…Konecky manages to write from a child’s point of view without ending up sounding silly, condescending or false.” (p 102)

1959

2007/04/152010/01/19 gr4c5Leave a comment

Davis, Thulani. 1959. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. 1992. 1959

Part novel, part historical rampage 1959 is 100% rich in descriptive imagery. 1959 is the story of Katherine “Willie” Tarrant, a coming of age girl growing up in racially divided Turner, Virginia. She has all the typical angst of any twelve year old – boys, makeup, popularity, daydreams driven by movies and celebrity fanfare. Woven into Willie’s world is the climate of the times. Segregation and integration push-pull of a racially divided era. While some of Davis’s story is told in first person from Willie’s point of view, much of the political, historical meat of the story is third person – conversations Willie overhears, meetings she eavesdrops on and situations she couldn’t have possibly been in. (Like during a sex scene and towards the end of the novel when Cole gets shot on a desolate road outside Turner.) There were times when I couldn’t believe a twelve year old was my guide, “With each grind your thighs would become sex weapons blowing away his cool” (p56). What kid speaks like that? “Death brought out banquets as if the mourners were starved by their loss, and yet the grievers never ate” (p 195).
What made this book such a page turner for me (I read it in less than a week) was the tension of the times. It builds slowly with the talk of school integration and builds after eight black college boys sit at a white only Woolworth’s counter, quietly demanding service. Davis masterfully weaves fictional characters with the undeniable historical truth of what really happened. I could hear the dogs bark, feel the sting of hate, see the bravery in the protester’s faces. Even though school integration didn’t happen for another six years, 1959 proved to be the catalyst for change and Davis captured it brilliantly.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Southern-Fried Fiction: Virginia” (p 209).