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I hope that this book redeemed me from the January book and I hope that it met the criteria for a love themed month. 

This book was so magical with its twists in the story and its weaves through time.  The beginning proved a little difficult to understand the back and forth through time and the plethora of new characters being introduced but once I was able to sit in quiet to process the characters, I really enjoyed the plot and it was easier to understand everyone’s role in the story.  Plus, the theme of unrequited love is always beautiful and suspenseful in a heartbreaking way. 

We see the idea of unrequited love between Leo and Alma, Bruno and Alma, Alma and Misha, Bird and God, and Alma’s mother and Jacob Marcus.  There are a lot of misunderstandings and things left unsaid by the characters.  There are many moments where just one small change would have changed the story for the characters.  I think that the unrequited love theme also leads to a sub-theme of jealousy.  Jealousy, not in its mean spirited variety, but a more envious feeling and from the idea of being helpless in its manifestation of despair.  It’s the ever present idea of wanting someone to like you as much as you like them, but learning that they don’t or that they stopped.

I was most enthralled with the main story of Leo and Alma.  It was such a sweet story of young love hindered by war and distance.  This book really highlights a story of “what could have been” in a very poetic and solemn way.  Leo never gets his chance to live a life with Alma and his son like he envisioned.  But his heartache turned into a story that inspired other people to fall in love (present-day Alma’s parents).  Leo’s story is his tribute to his beloved and then becomes an account of his son’s true history.  Leo is the catalyst for the novel.  It’s his actions and inactions that keep the plot moving to its sad end. His love never comes to fruition. 

This was truly a love story that spans time and language.  It was a non-saccharine sweet love story that had historic relevance and was a plausible story for many immigrants back before texting and email.  When distance and time separate us, it is easy to see the disintegration of relationships.  Luckily, this book brought it all back full circle to remind us that love, grief, and compassion continue no matter how much time lapses.  

What did you think of Alma’s decision to stay in her marriage and not go with Leo?

Was Leo right in letting his son live his entire life never knowing his biological father?

What is the significance of Leo making a point of being “seen” everyday by someone? 

What did you think the purpose of present-day Alma was to the story?  Why couldn’t we have seen this perspective through her mother who was actually translating the story?

Why did Jacob Marcus seek an alias when getting The History of Love translated?  Did he really run a risk by being himself?

What was the most significant relationship besides Leo and Alma? 

Is the novel within The History of Love Leo’s tribute to Alma or a more generalized tribute to an ideal love?

Is the meaning of Alma’s name?  Is there any significance to why the name was never changed in its many translations?

 

Well…I am going to begin by apologizing to those of you that are not fans of the short story format.  I am one of those people.  I like short stories but having to read an entire book of them can be difficult to garner enthusiasm to finish the book.  This is a lesson learned for me and hopefully I will not introduce another one any time soon.

On a positive note, the short stories were funny!  Some more than others but they all had wit, sarcasm, and cynicism…some of my favorite sentiments.  If I were to pick a favorite, it has to be “The Rematch”.  This story taken from the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare is so well written that you can imagine that this is the follow up to the original Aesop’s Fable The Tortoise and the Hare.  Who hasn’t wondered what happened to the Hare after his devastating loss to the Tortoise?  I really enjoyed that these two characters let the moment define them for the better and worse.  And I like that there is a story of redemption and also that it has a moral.  It teaches the lesson that we can be impetuous and cocky but if we learn the lesson we can be redeemed with hard work and concerted effort.  This was by far my favorite of all of the short stories.

My other top short stories include “Sophia”, “Kellogg’s” and “Never Fall in Love.” The story of “Sophia” was so cleverly written about a female sex robot.  Sophia was perfect in every way and, yet, he didn’t want her anymore once she showed emotion.  Currently, human nature does not allow for empathy and we find ourselves isolated by fear of others emotions, which does not allow us to have true relationships.  In “Kellogg’s”, my favorite statement is that he loved his parents but “I was a name-brand kid, and I was meant to have a name-brand life.”  We all feel like we don’t belong to the family that we grew up with.  We feel so different from them but we never act on it because eventually we turn into them.  This character refuses to be his parents and acts on his need to be different.  I enjoyed “Never Fall in Love” for its brevity and to-the-point message.  It is true that once we stop looking for something, it comes to us organically.

Although this is not one of my favorite books, I can appreciate the messages ironically delivered through these extremely short blurbs.  It’s not a format that I like and I think some of the messages could have been built into greater, longer stories. I admire the author’s ability to execute the stories but just wish there had been more of a driven plotline or an overreaching lesson captured throughout the stories.  Maybe a book of fables?

 

What did you think of the short story format?  Like? Dislike?

Which was your favorite story in the book?

What was your favorite sentiment throughout the book?

Would you have organized the stories differently?  How?

Could the author have combined the stories to make one fluid novel?  Was there a theme?

Introducing the January book selection…it is “One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories” by B.J. Novak.

He is one of my favorite sitcom writers and you may recognize him as one of the writers (and actors) on the show The Office.  He is hilarious as a performer and as a writer.  I am looking forward to reading his book…hope you are too!

I will post my review on January 30th so lets get to reading this very funny book 😉

Happy 2016 y’all!

Wow, talk about thinking a book is one thing but it totally surprises you with a twist.  In the beginning, we automatically think this book is only about Lydia dying and who did it, but the plot thickens as we move towards a motive for her death.  There are so many details in this short little book and each one of them is devastatingly important to Lydia.

We are introduced to a pushy mother who is living out her dreams through her oldest daughter.  We have a father living out his social ineptitude through his oldest daughter.  And we have two siblings who are forgotten ad ignored, yet are fulfilling the parent’s desires without notice.  The pressures placed on Lydia by both of her parents are the undoing of this family.   I think this story truly provides reflection on how our individual actions affect others around us.  In this case, we have two selfish adults (the parents) who are clearly so self-involved with their own angst and self-pity that they have projected their insecurities onto a child.  We all want our children to do better than ourselves, but at what cost?  It seems that the parents have convinced themselves that for their one child to succeed, she must do everything they always wanted to do but couldn’t.

This book touches on racial divides, gender expectations and suicide.  It is so easy to see the domino effect of our actions and our choices.  This book has the actual end result of projecting our desires onto our children.  A very well written story with so much detail and dysfunction to make us all question our true motives with our children and the potential effects it will have on them.  Lydia states on page 225 that “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”  For every push towards something, there is a pull away from it.  And Lydia’s mother finally concedes that after seeing everything in Lydia’s room and knowing everything that she had wanted for Lydia, that it “had dragged Lydia underwater at last” (page 247).  A very solemn conclusion but a final realization of what they had done to her.

 

What was your first thought about Lydia’s death?  What are your initial thoughts about Lydia’s parents?

Who is responsible for Lydia’s death?  Is 16 too young to make your own decisions?  What age makes you responsible versus blaming actions on your parents?

What is your final assessment of Lydia’s parents?  Do you believe the parents will change knowing what truly happened to Lydia?  Why do you think that they both chose Lydia as their symbol of success and not Nath or Hannah?

How do you think their relationships with Nath will change?  How will it change with Hannah?

If you are a parent, how did this story affect you?  Did you reflect on your own relationship with your child/children? Where do you draw the line with your kids on pushing them to do better?

What do you think of the title of the book?

I am so glad that I chose this book as our first because, as you found out, this little book has so much to say!  I am blown away by the impactful message this story conveyed and I am equally as inspired by its storytelling.  When you opened this little book, I hope that you noticed that the author labeled it as a fable.  By definition, a fable is a morality tale but is usually told through animals or inanimate objects.  This fable was told through a naïve young boy and this may have been the author’s effort to give us a naïve vessel to convey his story.

Nonetheless, this story was captivating from beginning to end.  We have a young boy telling a Holocaust story through his inexperienced eyes.  We don’t really know that it is a Holocaust story at first but little hints provided by the young boy, Bruno, lead us to that conclusion.  Even in the boys inability to say Auschwitz (he continually says “Out-With” even when corrected), shows the reader that Bruno has not been marred by the inexplicable things that are happening right outside his door.  Despite the evidence that something evil is happening in “Out-With”, Bruno remains untouched and unscathed.  Bruno is presented, time and time again with evidence of the happenings on the other side of the fence and yet he continues to live in his own bubble.  In Bruno’s discussions with Shmuel, Shmuel continually tells Bruno what is happening from his perspective and Bruno does not hear him.  Bruno continues to discuss his feasts, toys, three story house, etc.  These two boys are narrating their lives without expecting a response. Hey are each providing the pieces of the puzzle that links the two worlds at “Out-With” but they are not putting them together to help one another.  If they had listened, primarily Bruno to Shmuel, they may have understood what was actually happening there.

The message here can be as simple as a retelling of a Holocaust story or it can viewed as a deeper reflection of our current world and how, we as a society, can overlook the suffering of others by being self-involved and egocentric.  We can choose to be removed from crimes against humanity or we can choose to help.  Bruno could have stood up to the Lieutenant and claimed his friend, he could have told his family about Shmuel, and he or any of his family could have stopped Pavel’s beating.  Sometimes we don’t act until it’s too late and it directly affects us.

 

Do you think that that the fable presentation successfully helped to tell this story?  Would you have enjoyed it if it had been in a different literary format?

Why do you think that the author keeps Bruno naïve until the very end?  What does that say about society as a whole?  Is there a bigger message?

Why is Bruno blind to the concentration camp even when presented with Pavel and Shmuel?  What do they represent?

Why is Bruno’s family and Maria unaware of Bruno’s friendship?  Where do they think he goes to explore?

What do you think happened to Pavel? What happened to the Lieutenant?

What did you think of this story?  What message did you get from it?