Nov
18
I finished another of my books a while back but the one I started after it has taken me quite some time to plow through. So I’ll start with that difficult one, Hanna’s Daughters. This story of 3 generations of Scandinavian women covers about 100 years of time. The grandmother is Hanna, who is raped and becomes pregnant by a cousin at age 12. She later marries and has a daughter, Johanna. All of their stories are told by the granddaughter Anna who is searching to understand her mother and grandmother. The book was written in Sweden and translated into English. It started very slowly and seemed to not be written well at times but I think it was because of the translation from one language to another. The characters were sometimes hard to keep up with because several of them had the same names and it jumped back and forth between the past and present too much for me. For the first 50 or so pages of this book I struggled and tried to decide whether to finish it or not. I usually feel compelled to keep reading hoping that it gets better or that something will happen, which most of the time doesn’t. But I did keep on with it until I finished, and was struck by a few lines at the very end of the book. Anna was wondering why she and her mother had never talked about books, a common interest they had. She first thought it was because her mother didn’t dare talk to her but then she decided it was because she had never listened to her mother. She said, “I wasn’t interested in you as a person, only as my mother. Not until you fell ill, disappeared and it was too late, had all the questions come.” That seems so sad to me but I think so true many times with mothers & daughters. Sometimes you may not appreciate them until it is too late.
I read also that this is a book that benefits from a second reading and while that may be true, it’s highly unlikely I’ll read it again.
The Amber Photograph is another one from my list. Diedre McAlister had come home to North Carolina to help care for her dying mother. She gives her daughter a birthday gift right before her death, an old photograph. In her note she tells Diedre to find herself, find the truth but not to expect it to be what she thought. She realizes the girl in the picture must be her sister that she thought had been long dead. She sets off on an emotional cross country trip to try to find out about her past and answers to who her real father is.
I enjoyed this book and it was a fairly easy read; not too hard to figure out what would happen but I think the characters were appealing enough for me to see it through to the end.
Fall Reading Challenge updates: #3, #2 and #1. And my list is here.
November 19th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Sounds interesting. I might have to try it. You and Stacy crack me up with your reading lists but honestly, that’s always been something I wanted to do.
November 19th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Well, if you had trouble with Hanna’s Daughters, then I know I will. We do have very similar reading tastes. I think I would really like The Amber Photograph, since I’ve enjoyed all of the other Penelope J Stokes books that I have read. Hers always seem to deal with some sort of memorabilia, a scrapbook or journal or photograph and tracing it back and seeing how it affects people or things that have happened to them. I really like that concept. Is that a library one or one you own? If you own it, I might like to borrow it after the holidays 🙂
P.S. I’ll do your sidebar updates soon, promise!
November 19th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
What a great title for your blog! I LOVE it! Too bad about the “lost in translation” bit of this series. It sounds like it could be great. There is a series that I read several years ago and was really good but I don’t remember the name. I’ll have to find out. It’s about a composer and his son. The title are musical. Anyway, I’ll find out and let you know.
November 20th, 2006 at 9:56 am
I’m surprised an editor did not make the author change the names in the first book so that there was no duplication of names. You’re right, that is very confusing for the reader. I just closed a book that I got to about 40 or 50 pages and just could not get into it.