If you guessed "finished another book" you'd be correct. It was the April selection of the Parnassus First Edition Book Club. It certainly was not one I would have picked off a shelf in a bookstore. Though I'm glad I read. This selection is a memoir by Maggie Smith, the author not the actor, You Could Make This Place Beautiful.
Very likely this will be read by more women than men, but men would profit by reading it. Smith is processing the reality of her divorce while trying not to be bitter, nor claiming that she had no responsibility. Her fierce defense of her children in the break-up and aftermath shines through. Her thought that, women in marriage are often treated more like staff then partners, will resonate with many readers.
In a previous blog I had quoted from this book "When you lose someone you love, you start to look for new ways to understand the world." P. 18 So true and typical of the insights that fill the book. She writes "I wasn't good at being myself in the marriage. I wasn't good at handling what was apparently, 'the deal.' Was the deal that we'd both freeze at the instant of 'I do' and not grow or change or succeed or fail or suffer or triumph from that day forward, until death do us part?" P. 207 Again "This something I grieve: the severed tie to someone who knew me since college. the cokeeper of our memories, the person who could tell my kids what I was like during those years, the person who could tell me what I was like, the person I shared my life with." P. 241 YES! That captures so much of the pain of bereavement both in divorce and death.
Smith became famous with her poem Good Bones. This will only add to her stature.
Takk for alt,
Al
No comments:
Post a Comment