families

One Book A Week-27: “Lucy By The Sea”, Elizabeth Strout

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

A short, honest, realistic view of life, this book by Strout, written from the viewpoint of Lucy
Barton, continues the story started in her book, “Oh, William”, where Lucy and her ex, William, go to Maine to seek out his long lost sister whom he did not know existed until he took a DNA test. Once again they head to Maine, but for a much more stressful reason, the Covid pandemic. They both live separately in NYC where Covid hit early and hard. After accurately assessing the danger, William finds a large, old house to rent on the Maine coast and convinces Lucy to go with him there to save their lives. He convinces one daughter to leave NYC but the other insists on staying.

The book addresses the issues of isolation brought on by the pandemic and how people deal with stress and isolation differently and with the difficulties which arise when once close families can no longer see each other. It also shows that isolation can bring the positives that can be found in a more quiet life. Strout’s uniquely simple style emphasizes the emotions and stresses as well as the joys life can bring to all of us.

Book a Week-21: “Boy, Snow, Bird”, Helen Oyeyemi

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A unique and sometimes frightening story with a surprising ending, this is another tale of the lengths to which people of color will go to pass for white to gain the benefits of whiteness. For one New England family this has succeeded quite well by sending a too dark daughter back South to live with relatives and never allowing her to come to the town where the rest of the family lives. It fails when a too dark child is born and the parents keep her with them. It is also a tale of gender identity and how rape and abuse can destroy and deform and of resilience in the face of endless obstacles. This is not an ordinary novel.

Two Kinds of People

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The novel I finished yesterday described one of the characters as “the kind of man who would find his place anywhere because of how he interpreted the world.”  He was the kind of man who saw the world not as a system of barriers but rather a place of common ground, a man with an openness to the world, an openness to the unfamiliar, a man who welcomed the unknown.

This made me think of people I know and how they react, to where they want to travel, if at all, to what they desire to explore, to know.  Many of my friends travel little and rarely, if ever, outside the United States.  Others, like me, desire to visit places and cultures totally different, unfamiliar, to “know” the unknown.

This lead me to question how these two different types of people come to be.  In my case perhaps it started with family road trips, the earliest of which occurred when I was three and my dad drove from northwest Missouri all the way to Monterey, Mexico, and back.  I still love road trips.

Which kind of person are you?  Why?  Is it upbringing, heredity, environment?