September & October Reads
As I started thinking about the books I had read over the past couple of months I began to notice a theme. These all contain female charaters who made tough decisions when there were no good choices. Even though they are set in different times, places, and realities they depict a theme that is very prevalent for women today. Women’s lives, in particular, are full of options where there really is not an outcome where you come out on top. Women have to decide which losses they are willing to take. And those decisions are different for everyone.
The Poppy War
The world building in this book was so good. And I could feel the motivation of main character very well. There are so many hints and clues throughout the book alluding to who she is and who she has the potential to become. I love the almost alternate time stream for the opium wars used as the base for these books. The most interesting theme, which I wasn’t expecting, was how much people and groups choose who they dehumanize. It’s willful. What I hate about this character is that she wants power so much that she loses herself sometimes. What I love about her, and resonate with, is her ability to make difficult choices. When there are two bad choices she makes the one that wins.
Before We Were Yours
If there was ever a book that convinced me that I will have more than one kid, if I have any at all, it’s this one. As an only child, the relationships between siblings fascinate me. Through the perspective of the past and present you can see how these women held on to whatever they could and painfully let go of whatever they couldn’t. At the end of it all they lived for each other even if it was in secret. One line I loved read something like, women’s futures aren’t dependent on their pasts. And I think that is a strength that isn’t always recognized. Because women have traditionally traded their names and status for that of their husbands, it has always been easier for them to become someone else and move forward. Although there are the patriarchal drawbacks, this aspect is a bit of a bonus.
Beloved
Poignant. That is my one word summary. There are no punches pulled in this story and it’s one of those very real depictions of slavery and black life in the time spanning before and just after the Civil War that most people could benefit from reading. The book leaves little dignity for the characters in some places because mostly there was none. People took their pride in whatever ways they could. You either broke with no dignity left or preserved what you could. And sometimes they made choices that were the only rational option, or at least it seemed like it, and the choice itself is what broke them.
