"A Northern Light" is advertised as a YA novel, but I think it is great for adults I really enjoyed this one, recommended by Sheila, I'm loving having someone at work to talk books with. I miss Rebecca.
The chapters skip back and forth from Matties past to present, but once I got used to that I enjoyed it. The murder that takes place in the book is based on an actual murder that took place in 1906 and the letters in the book were the letters that were used in the trial. The character of Mattie however is fictional. Excellent descriptions. Believable characters, I cared about what happened to them.
Mattie picks a word from the dictionary each day to learn and tries to use it in a sentence, here's the first on page 15, I was feeling rather fractious before I started the book.
Tommy peered at the dictionary. " 'Apt to break out into a
passion...snappish, peevish, irritable, cross,' " he read. "
'P-per-verse. Pettish.' "
"Isn't that just perfect?" I said. "Fractious," I repeated,
relishing the bite of the f , the teeth against lip. A new
word. Bright with possibilities. A flawless pearl to turn over
and over in my hand, then put away for safekeeping.
On page 78, italics are the authors.
I thought of my new word of the day. Can a girl be unmanned? I
wondered. By a boy? Can she be unbrained?
The answer to that question is unfortunately yes.
The next one is a long one pages 96 and 97.
I wondered if all hose things were the best things to have or if it was better
to have words and stories. Miss Wilcox had books but no family.
Minnie had a family now, but those babies would keep her from reading for a good
long time. Some people, like my aunt Josie and Alvah Dunning the hermit,
had neither love nor books. Nobody I knew had both.
Here's another long one, but I couldn't see what to leave out. Pages 273-274.
As I quickly patted my hair back into place, it hit me: Emily
Dickinson was a damned sneaky genius.
Holing up in her father's house, never marrying, becoming a recluse -- that
had sounded like giving up to me, but the more I thought about it, the more it
seemed she fought by not fighting. And knowing her poems as I do, I would
not put such underhanded behavior past her. Oh, maybe she was lonely at
times, and cowed by her pa,but I bet at midnight, when the lights were out and
her father was asleep, she went sliding down the banister and swinging from the
chandelier. I bet she was just dizzy with freedom.
Yet another long one, pages 312 and 313.
If you harness two horses together and one is stronger, the weaker horse
gets buffeted and bruised. That's what being friends with Weaver was like.
A farmer can put an evener on his team's yoke to compensate for the weaker horse
by shifting some of the load to the stronger one. But you can't put an
evener on two people's hearts or their souls. I wished I could just up and
go to New York City. I wished I was as strong as Weaver was. I
wished I was as fearless.
But I was not.
I wish I were strong and fearless too.
Page 372.
Lucifer was a beautiful angel whom God chucked out of heaven for being
rebellious. He found himself banished to hell, but instead of being sorry
for angering God and trying to make amends, he set about agitating again.
This one actually has a very different meaning in the context of the story and is part of a longer paragraph, I am just using this particular passage for my own nefarious purpose ;)
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