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Ninety-year-old Margaret Riley is content hiding from the world, finding comfort in the mystery novels that keep her company, that is, until she spots a woman who's moved into the long-empty house across the pond. Jennifer Young is also looking to hide. On the run from her old life, she and her four-year-old son Milo have moved to a quiet town where no one from her past can find her. In Jennifer, Margaret sees both a potential companion in her loneliness and a mystery to be solved. But Jennifer refuses to talk about herself, her son, his missing father, or her past. Frustrated, Margaret crosses more and more boundaries in pursuit of the truth, threatening to unravel the new life Jennifer has so painstakingly created - and reveal some secrets of her own.… (altro)
This was a good book. I wish there were half stars. It's not quite a four star. It would be good for a book group. Chapters aren't too long and the character development proceeds at a good pace. ( )
This was pretty much a disappointment with one bright spot. I did read it all the way through (as opposed to abandoning) because I assumed that eventually, the story would turn into something. But, at the end, I realized that while the plot was weak, the real problem was that I did not find one single one of the characters, interesting, admirable, or likable. Not good. The bright spot was the reader Dianna Doorman. I'd never read a book read by her before and she's excellent. She was especially good with the little kid voice. Most readers do not do this well. She sure did. ( )
Not one of my favorites. I enjoyed the parts when Margaret was telling her WWII story, but short of that, I was not intrigued. I found this book kept trudging along at a rather slow, boring pace. Too bad, I had high hopes after The Myth if You and Me. ( )
This is the story of two women - one young (Jennifer) and one old (Margaret) - whose lives intersect in rural Tennessee. They are both keeping secrets about their past, and those secrets have tremendously damaged each of them. Normally, in stories like this, you would expect a bright, shiny resolution to all of the problems. Not so in this book - and I like that. Sometimes, real life can't be neatly tied up in a nice, pretty bow. ( )
Elderly Margaret Riley lives alone in rural Tennessee. She seeks comfort in her mystery novels and her memories - not other people. One day Margaret looks across her pond and realizes she has a new neighbor. Margaret becomes intrigued and eventually meets the young woman, Jennifer, and her son, Milo. Margaret begins telling Jennifer about her past and finds herself increasingly curious about Jennifer's own past. Why are she and Milo in Tennessee? What is Jennifer not telling her? Fancying herself a detective similar to those in her beloved novels, will Margaret unveil Jennifer's secrets?
The novel reveals its stories (and secrets) through varying narratives - mainly those of Margaret and Jennifer. We see Margaret's increasing curiosity about Jennifer's life and Jennifer's own increasing reluctance to share why she and Milo have left their old life behind. Further, we see that the two women may not be as different as they appear. Margaret begins telling Jennifer about her life as a nurse during the War, while we learn about Jennifer's life with her drunken husband. Suddenly, the parallels between the two women -- especially when pushed to the brink -- seem surprisingly clear.
This was an intriguing book, in many ways. Neither Margaret nor Jennifer are incredibly likable characters (Margaret is often your classic "old biddy" for sure), but they are interesting. In some ways, nothing really happens in the book - a lot of the action has happened in the past, and we're simply learning about it as Margaret and Jennifer reveal their respective pasts and secrets. Still, it's an insightful look into the two woman's lives - I found it quite compelling. The end was somewhat fascinating, though it did seem to fall a bit flat after all the buildup. Still, a solid 3.5 stars. ( )
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The whole world thinks she did it. She knows that. Even in her house with the doors locked and the blinds down, she can feel the weight of it. All that certainty.
Every story is a history...and when there is no comprehensible story, there is no history. ---CHARLES BAXTER, BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE
Shall we continue with your story where we left off? He says. I've forgotten just where that was, I say. This is not quite true, but I wish to see if he has really been listening to me, or just pretending. ---MARGARET ATWOOD, ALIAS GRACE
I always see the skull beneath the skin. ---P. D. JAMES
Dedica
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For Dr. Florence "Flossie" Ridley
For Dr. Florence "Flossie" Ridley And in memory of Col. Ellis Cameron "Cam" Stewart and Mildred "Sissy" Stewart Dr. Nina J. Markus and Capt. Felix "Mac" McAndrews
And in memory of Col. Ellis Cameron "Cam" Stewart and Mildred "Sissy" Stewart, Dr. Nina J. Markus and Capt. Felix "Mac" McAndrews
Incipit
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Where before there was no one, suddenly I, Margaret Riley, have a neighbor.
The whole world thinks she did it.
Citazioni
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Impatience and age are not compatible.
Before they put me into a nursing home, in forced companionship with the sick and the dying, I will fling myself into the pond. I'll weight my pockets with rocks, like Virginia Woolf, whose books I did my best to understand. All her words float away when I think of her. I see her crouched at the edge of the water, searching for just the right stones.
But some of us don't work so that we can rest. Some of us rest so that we can work.
Don't leave me. Anyone I can say that to is already gone.
The world has forgotten that there is more pleasure in wondering than knowing.
No will love us if they know the worst and yet if they don't know the worst we can't trust their love.
I cannot get the world's attention. That is what it means to be old.
still, I keep imagining myself as a detective, and what does a detective want but to be admitted into the house of the suspect?
Jennifer stands on the other side of the looking glass, where she always ends up, where she's always been, and what she'd really like to know is, is she cursed or did she do it to herself, and is there a difference? Either way she believes she understands something these women do not. The ordinary is a mask worn by the awful. What we accept as normal is a play in which we've all agreed to take part. They don't know it's a play, or they willfully forget. She can't forget. She just keeps watching, bemused by their commitment to the performance, forgetting to say her lines. Why can't she change this about herself, as easily as she changed her name? Stack the past away like boxes in the attic. Be one of these women, remake herself in their image—be cheerfully annoyed with the preschool teachers, discuss the last book she read. Lighten up.
What a dangerous force, male attention. What terrible things women do to get it, or to make it go away.
"Some things happen and some things don't. It hardly matters at my age which is which."
A good detective knows when to let the silence do its work.
You can outgrow heartbreak only when you don't love anyone anymore, and maybe not even then.
My throat closed as if I would choke. As if I stood at the edge of the pond, pockets full of stones.
We call ourselves girls and boys when we want to go back in time.
The one who wants to leave the party is never the favored one.
Being in her company was like mourning a dead person while sitting down to dinner with her ghost.
Manliness—a trap they build themselves, and then invite their sons to join them in.
I'd been trying so hard with her, trying so hard for weeks. All that effort, like doing a rain dance in the desert.
In some ways despite all I'd seen I was innocent, and I was inadequate.
It frightens me a little to think of the person who did that. The person who documented the horrific and the daily as if they were the same.
"What happened is what somebody says happened," she said. "That's all history is."
I think you know perfectly well that the past creates us too.
If a small child does something bad, surely it's the parent's fault. What are children if not evidence of our own worst qualities? They witness them, they replicate them, they remind you again and again of everything that's wrong with you.
"It's not really heights that I'm afraid of. It's edges." She peers over. "They make me want to jump."
Clearly the old are not immune to self-delusion.
Being old has so few advantages. One must take them when one can.
I can't believe in heaven. Even now, as death grows ever harder to unimagine.
All this bonding they do these days. As if what's between a parent and a child would vanish without snuggling and trips to the zoo. I can attest that one is sufficiently bonded without those things, one is sufficiently stuck.
So much depends on every choice we make. This is obvious and yet endlessly to be marveled at.
It was one of those dreams so vivid they compete with actual events in your memory, insisting on their realness.
I'd been living in one of those dreams where you know you're supposed to be somewhere but you just can't get there and time speeds by while you stand at the mirror, trying to pin up your hair.
It is easier to be alone when you've been a long time used to it. When you've forgotten the other possibility.
We all want to satisfy our curiosity, and the little voice that tells us it's wrong to peep and pry is one trained into us from childhood, and nothing natural about it. We will all satisfy our curiosity when we can, which is any time we think no one will catch us.
They say there's peace if you can relinquish desire.
Forgiveness is a terrible thing to want, because of all things on earth it is the hardest to get.
Ultime parole
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Ninety-year-old Margaret Riley is content hiding from the world, finding comfort in the mystery novels that keep her company, that is, until she spots a woman who's moved into the long-empty house across the pond. Jennifer Young is also looking to hide. On the run from her old life, she and her four-year-old son Milo have moved to a quiet town where no one from her past can find her. In Jennifer, Margaret sees both a potential companion in her loneliness and a mystery to be solved. But Jennifer refuses to talk about herself, her son, his missing father, or her past. Frustrated, Margaret crosses more and more boundaries in pursuit of the truth, threatening to unravel the new life Jennifer has so painstakingly created - and reveal some secrets of her own.