tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6373039528924145838.post1468169320787748690..comments2023-10-16T01:32:44.095-07:00Comments on The Highly Educated Housewife: Book Club: The Shipping NewsSalleehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13944361481839967188noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6373039528924145838.post-6111220969859990672011-10-06T06:50:39.610-07:002011-10-06T06:50:39.610-07:00Oh Sallee, I want to have you and your readers ove...Oh Sallee, I want to have you and your readers over for snacks and lavendar lemonade and really book club it up. Commenting on this book has been on my to-do list for too many weeks. I owe you a long email with a thousand other things that I've been meaning to tell you. When you are out in UT next, we must meet up. But on to the book . . .<br /><br />As I began this book, I was worried that it was going to be much like The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The main character is an unloved, unappreciated, overweight fella who is always getting the short end of the stick. The book started out fast and bright and a bit spicy (his wife and the kidnapping of his girls), but the pace and the tone of the book changed with the scenery and shift to Newfoundland. I loved the juxtaposition and the Oscar Wao comparisions were left back in the first chapters.<br /><br />I really enjoyed this book as well, and this passage really seems to capture everything I felt about the book so perfectly:<br /> "For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, and that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery."<br /><br />I also loved the green house and what it seemed to symbolize. Both Quoyle and the Aunt showed up at the old place with such broken lives, trying to piece together a semblance of structure, and it was the house that became the physical rendering of that desire. They struggle with wanting to put things back as they felt they should be, and life doesn't really take off for the Aunt until she abandons the house project in favor of a new location and her much-loved business. For Quoyle, he holds on tighter, always trying to get back there by his wreck of a boat or on almost impassable roads, and when he can't get there, he still looks across this bay at what should be his home, but never quite is a home. It's the same way he holds onto Petal and his life back in the States and what should have been. It is only when the house comes apart, and he lets himself love and be loved by another that Newfoundland becomes his home. Home seems such an important part of this book, and Quoyle always seems to be in search of one for himself and his daughters. My favorite bungled attempt at housing was when he was going to move into his pal's trailer, and during the rowdy farewell party, the drunk partygoers dump the place into the icy ocean. <br /><br />Oh, there are so many quiet things about this book that I love and would love to chat about, but my Emily really must get to school, and at six she still needs mom to pack lunch and help her pick out her clothes on this rainy morning. I would never have picked up Moby Dick on my own (too daunting), so I'm glad it is our next read. I'm also rereading Gilead. Have you read that one?Lisahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10014992355077438590noreply@blogger.com