Summer reading

During my trip to Spain I read three books – Revolutionary Road, Atonement, and The Last Queen.

I read the first two books because I wanted to read books that had also been made into film, even though I had already seen Atonement last spring.

Atonement is about two lovers torn apart by a young girl’s disastrous misunderstanding. As a reviewer put it, “it will break your heart.” It bewitched me. It pulled me in. It is exquisitely written. I wanted to read a love story, and in Atonement, I found a love story more passionate, more heartrending, more incredible than I’ve ever experienced. My heart broke for the lovers, rejoiced with the lovers, and was melted by the lovers, Robbie and Cecelia. Perhaps this is because I am in a relationship of my own, more loving, more real, more passionate and consuming and deep than I’ve ever been in, but I found myself relating to their desires and desperation to be together and the elation they found together. Since I knew what was going to happen, I found myself hesitating a hundred pages in, not knowing how the author was going to unfold their story, not knowing if I could stand watching it unfold in my imagination page after page but I am so glad I did. It makes me so grateful for the one I love, for my family, for my situation, that it is not wrecked by hardship or war or separation or schisms caused by lies and betrayal. The author Ian McEwen has a captivating way with words and can arouse emotions, unfold situations, and weave drama second to none. WOW. Atonement was incredible. It has left a lasting impression on me. I will never forget Atonement. One line I especially liked and could relate to was this, “the closeness of a familiar face was not ludicrous, it was wondrous,” because like Robbie and Cecelia, Clint and I have known each other since we were young, and his face has been a familiar one to me for ten years now –“she returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty in a face with a lifetime’s habit had taught her to ignore” – nine of which I had spent ignoring him, taunting him, interested in him, or separated from him, and one of those years I have spent loving him. One quote that has also stuck with me said how our bodies are material things that are easily torn but not easily mended, and just thinking how that applies to matters of the heart makes me mindful of how people can easily be broken, hearts can easily be broken, and it takes great effort and time and love to heal those hurts.

I read Revolutionary Road before Atonement and like Atonement better because of the LOVE. Revolutionary Road is about a couple in the 1950s who are bored with suburbia and are emotionally bankrupt. They’re bored. They’re unsatisfied. They think happiness is just one - you name it – away: one affair, one promotion, one friend, one drink. They remind me of Dasiy and Tom from The Great Gatsby and the haunting quote about how they retreat back into their money or carelessness or whatever it is that keeps them together, because the couple from Revolutionary Road are just that - wreckless, irresponsible, selfish. It’s really rather sad and pitiful, and if it hadn’t been so well written I would have stopped reading it because it was depressing, a downer, not at all uplifting or redeeming. It made me grateful that they are not real people, I do not know the characters in the book, and that my family and friends aren’t like them. I still may watch the movie but I’m thinking I may not, since the book just leaves ya feeling sad, or it did me, at least.

The Last Queen was about Queen Juana of Spain who inherits the crown after her mother, the famous Queen Isabel, dies. It was really neat reading this while in Spain after visiting the Alhambra that Queen Isabel and her husband took from the Moors after defeating them in 1492. Boy, did Queen Juana (known as Queen Juana the Loca) have trials! I like princesses and Clint often says I wish I was a princess, but this book shows how much ambition made being at the top of the ranks a rough place to be, especially for a female back in those days, and it was not all it is glamorized to be. Usually the queens’ husbands had frequent affairs, and they were married for political alliances in the first place, and there are so many people vying for power that it is so hard to trust anyone – even your own husband, in Juana’s case. This book, though not as poetic and magical and well written as Atonement, was still a very good story in its own right. The author went to great care researching and developing Juana. I found it interesting that she was known as Juana the Loca and her husband was known as Phillip the Fair. I thought his fairness was the supposed cause of her craziness and that she went crazily jealous – which she did, as history records her as ripping some of her pearls off her husband’s mistress at a party that her husband had given away to be a true account – but craziness was what her enemies schemed to have her labeled so she would be seen as unfit to rule (which reminded me of how King Henry said Ann Boleyn had bewitched him, in order to justify beheading her – The Other Boleyn Girl was a GREAT read!). Her fate is very sad, but she protected the crown of Spain. This does not have a movie set to the book but I know there are books out there about Juana and her family. A fine read indeed, especially having spent a holiday in Spain!