Jefferson Tomazella Felicissimo Tomazella Felicissimo itibaren Bethera, SC 29434, USA
I just re-read this book for the first time in years, and while it affects me in a much different way than it did when I was a teenager, damn, does it affect me. I see now that the writing, while beautiful, can be a little melodramatic, and that the central romance of the story is not really at all romantic--Harris is kind of a dick, and Ann is, in fact, a little cold, not to mention the fact that their brief affair is completely selfish. However, I also think that their flaws are the point. Ann Grant/Katz/Stackpole/Lord is, ultimately, an ordinary person, and what is truly haunting about this book is its treatment of what it means to realize life's ordinariness at the end. Ultimately, Ann's life has been a series of joys and sadnesses. Some of the sadnesses are terrible, most notably the loss of her son, but none of them are particularly unique. And I think that within this familiarity lies the book's true heartbreak--it is a narrative about the singular power of memory. Minot examines with compassion the significance we lend, perhaps arbitrarily, to what is finally nothing but a brief collection of incidents that survives only in the stories we choose to tell before we go.