Thoughtful Reads for the Long Winter Months

Enjoy these thought-provoking novel by two skilled authors whose work is not only lyrical, suspenseful, and a joy to read, but which also stays with you long afterwards making you question your assumptions and values.

Klara and the Sun

     320 pages

        Knopf

        (2021)

Winter is here, and when all the skiing, snow shoeing, and sledding are done, it’s time to relax indoors, find a comfy chair, and settle down with a good book, especially during the  quiet, owl-light hours of evening.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s most recent book, Klara and the Sun, is perfectly written for such a time that allows to read thoughtfully and reflect. Like a well-aged wine whose taste is layered with many overtones, this book is filled with subtle feelings and ideas that will cause you to think deeply about what the author is saying concerning our world.

Even though Klara and the Sun is technically a science fiction, the world it depicts is not that different from our own: the environment is being harmed, material inequality is obvious, and parents go to extremes to give their child the advantage. Like the author, we’re already questioning the long-term effects of some of our technology: the Internet, genetically modified organisms, and computer data gathering, to name just a few. (Read the non-fiction book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by historian Yuval Noah Halavi for a disturbing take on where technology may be leading us.) In fact, there is already a field of robotics called “affective computing” in which robots are programmed to read human emotions. After all, we want robots who can respond to how we are feeling. But will robots eventually have their own feelings?  

When the story opens, Klara is displayed in a store window along with other AFs. She is an exceptionally advanced AF, or artificial friend, who is extremely observant: “the more I watched, the more I wanted to learn, and . . . I became puzzled, then increasingly fascinated by the more mysterious emotions passers-by would display in front of us.” Yet she learns about humans and their emotions without passing judgment on them. She is the friend we would all love to have: always there, always encouraging. Her primary goal is “to be as kind and helpful an AF as possible.” But she is, after all, just a robot, and robots are by definition less than human. One woman in the book compares her to a vacuum cleaner; teenage boys discuss throwing her across the room like a football to see if she lands on her feet. Humans can be insensitive, egotistical, and spiteful, but Klara notes that, even though “they have rough ways, . . . they may not be so unkind. They fear loneliness and that’s why they behave as they do.”

After some setbacks, a 14-year-old girl named Josie finally selects Klara to be her AF. In the story, AFs are bought as companions for “lifted” teens, those whose parents have chosen to have them undergo genetic editing in order to give them an academic edge. Because these teens are so advanced, they are schooled individually, at home on computers. To prevent loneliness, they have monthly “interaction meetings” with other lifted teens, and the rest of the time they have their AFs.

Throughout the book, Josie suffers from an unnamed illness that perhaps has been caused by the genetic editing, if the guilt her mother feels is any indication. It becomes Klara’s mission to help Josie get better by supplicating the Sun, in  whom she has unwavering faith. Before being chosen by Josie, Klara witnessed the Sun bestow his “special nourishment” on a beggar man on the sidewalk who appeared to have died, but later awoke. As part of this mission, Klara becomes convinced she must make an offering to the Sun—she must destroy a particularly nasty piece of construction equipment that emits dust and smoke into the atmosphere, thus blocking the Sun’s rays. The lengths to which she goes to accomplish this goal demonstrate her unconditional love for Josie.

Ultimately, Klara proves very adept at interpreting human feelings, but does she have feelings of her own? After reading this book, you may consider Klara the apotheosis of humanity, what we would look like if we became our better selves.

Kazuo Ishiguro is an award-winning author well known for his deeply nuanced exploration of feelings. In his 2017 acceptance speech when he won the Nobel prize in Literature, he said, “. . . in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?” Klara and the Sun is a story about what it feels like to love someone, and at the end of the day, that’s what makes us all the best human being we can be.

In the Gloaming

     288 pages

Simon & Schuster

      (2000)

A collection of short stories, In the Gloaming has no robots, but like Klara and the Sun it plumbs the depths of human thoughts and feelings. The title suggests the owl-light time, since “gloaming” is the Scottish term for twilight, when daylight and darkness briefly overlap. According to folk lore, it’s the time when humans, who are not yet done with the day, may encounter spirits, who are just coming out for the night.

“In the Gloaming” is the first of ten tales from this collection and the one from which the book takes its name.  A mother and her dying son finally begin to connect during their after-dinner conversations. “I always though it hurt you somehow that the day was over,” he says to her, “but you said it (the gloaming) was a beautiful time because for a few moments the purple light made the whole world look like the Scottish highlands on a summer night.” “Yes,” she responds, “As if the earth was covered with heather.” Later, she observes that “the dusk worked its spell,” and she began “living her life for the twilight moment when his (her son’s) eyes would begin to glow, the signal that he was stirring into consciousness,” after his illness-induced torpor of the day.

Their conversations make her think how “Parents and children were all captive audiences to each other; in view of this, it was amazing how little comprehension there was of one another’s story.” While she sits beside him in his wheelchair, she observes that as they talk, “he became more like his old self . . . . He became sweeter, the way he’d been as a child, before he began to gird himself with layers of irony and clever remarks.” “When they sat quietly together she felt as close to him as she ever had. It was still him in there, inside the failing shell.” During their final discussions, she ultimately realizes that it is her son, rather than her workaholic husband, who has been the love of her life. 

When the title story “In the Gloaming” was first published in 1993, it appeared in The New Yorker and immediately inspired a made-for-television HBO movie directed by Christopher Reeve; the mother, Janet, is superbly acted by Glenn Close. 

The author of these short stories is Alice Elliott Dark, whose last name sounds like a pseudonym that portends spooky stories. But they’re not scary, unless you find missed opportunities, poor judgment, and unwelcome surprises to be scary. Rather, they are portraits of everyday people whom we come to know deeply by the end of the story. The author delves into the psyche of men as well as  women, teens all the way to seniors. One of the stories is even told from the viewpoint of an entire community; the final story, “Watch the Animals,” is narrated in the first personal plural “we” point of view.

And who hasn’t known a judgmental young teen, such as the young girl Frannie in “Dreadful Language”? She curses her mother for divorcing her father, then marrying again for financial security. But as an adult, Frannie comes to see that she herself is in a similar situation. She has become just like the mother she always disdained. Then she knows that some words—like regret, shame, and loneliness—are far worse than any four-letter words. 

Then there’s the wronged wife, Helen, in “The Secret Spot,” who fantasizes about getting revenge on Julia, the woman she thinks tried to steal her husband. When they meet by chance in Central Park, Helen swoops into action, casually, but with savage purpose, rubbing Julia’s nose in what she believes to be her perfect marriage. The “secret spot,” is the place where Helen and Nick got engaged, but it’s actually Strawberry Fields, within Central Park. Countless people troop through there every day. And it’s not the only thing which Helen is deluded about. In one of the most twisting and devastatingly tense stories of the collection, Helen comes to wonder if the husband whom she prizes so much might be someone she doesn’t even know.

It’s generally acknowledged that short stories are more difficult to write than novels, since the author has less space in which to accomplish her goals. But Alice Elliott Dark’s range of characterization proves that she is deeply intuitive, and this narrative skill combined with what has been called her “pitch-perfect prose” establishes her as a powerful storyteller. The collection is considered a “contemporary classic.” She’s been compared to other noteworthy short-story writers like Lorrie Moore and Alice Munro, and “In the Gloaming” was selected by John Updike for inclusion in the anthology of Best American Short Stories of the Century.

Not surprisingly, Dark is a professor of English in the MFA program at Rutgers University as well as being the prize-winning author of two novels and two short story collections. 

The Signs along the Way

Lately, I’ve been a little discouraged. I’m not sure if it’s because I lost my outside job during the COVID quarantine or because I’m at a stage in life where things normally change. I’m entering retirement, and the word itself has both positive and negative associations with it. To most people, it means you’re getting old.

So to get out of my funk, I try to use positive words to create affirmations for myself. I am capable and productive, is maybe the first thing I say. We all want to feel useful in the world, as if we’re getting something done, moving life along, accomplishing something. The something I’m doing may be as insignificant as washing the dishes or sending a sympathy card to a bereaved friend. It may make a difference to me: I might feel better about myself with a clean kitchen, as if life is somehow more orderly and I can think clearly. Subconsciously, I still know life is still chaotic and unpredictable, but for this moment, having a clean kitchen lifts my spirits. Or the action of sending a thoughtful card and note to someone else who, like me, may be feeling down, can lift up the other, and the other is also part of me. We’re all united in this one, big human race, and what benefits others also benefits me.

Okay. So momentarily after cleaning the kitchen and letter writing, I feel better. Maybe that feeling even lasts awhile. But ultimately my brain is likely to run back along the same negative channels. Recent brain research tells us that our thoughts follow neural pathways, and the more frequently used that pathway is, the more often our thoughts travel down it.

This seems like the chicken or egg problem. Which comes first? Is that neural pathway well worn because my thoughts often go that way? Or do my thoughts often go that way because that neural pathway is wide and well traveled? I guess ultimately it doesn’t matter, because if I have established those negative neural pathways over the course of a lifetime, then I have them. And whenever I’m down or in a funk or even just bored, my thoughts immediately jump onto that negative superhighway.

But they don’t have to. That’s where positive affirmations come in. They’re like road signs pointing to a new road, one I don’t often take. I am accomplishing things that are important to me, is another way my thoughts can travel.

Recently, someone commented to me that he didn’t know why I practice the piano because I’m really not very good at it. I was hurt, of course, and right away my thoughts started down that negative neural pathway that I’ve traveled so often before. He’s right. I’m not any good. Why am I doing this? I started learning too late in life. I might as well give this up because it’s just a waste of time. I was sailing down that superhighway of discouragement.

But I stopped and said, Hey, I don’t have to take this road, even though it’s one I usually travel. I deliberately decided to try another less traveled road. The sign to this road says: Playing the piano keeps my brain active. Or the sign that says, Even if you’re not particularly good, playing lets you hear great classical music. Bach, Beethoven and Clementi are all reaching forward in time towards me, allowing me to hear their thoughts and feel their emotions from so many centuries ago. And there’s another sign that says, You’ve learned to read music, something that seemed so mysterious most of your life. All those little dots and squiggles and lines now have meaning, and I can translate them from the page, through my eyes, and down into my fingers as they strike the keys. What kind of miracle is that?

I think that much of the time I’m unhappy, it’s because my thoughts are on the wrong road. Affirmations can put me onto another road, the road less traveled (to use the title of Scott Peck’s 1978 book on what makes for a contented life). I just have to remember to look at the signs.

Change the World, Not Your Pronoun

Change the World, Not Your Pronoun

Don’t call me “she.” Call me “they.”

Why? You’re only one person, I say.

Yeah, but there’s no gender neutral pronoun.

Yes, there is. “It.”

I don’t want to be called “it.”

No one wants to called it, but nowadays there are some who want to be called they. Why? Because they don’t want others to know their gender. 

Gender is probably the first and most fundamental thing we know about ourselves. It affects our entire life, perhaps even our destiny. So why would you not want someone to have this crucial piece of information about you? That’s like trying to know your neighbor without being told where she lives. 

There’s no question that gender causes you to make certain assumptions about others. It may change how you act. What you say. How you feel about that person. If a woman meets a man, she may act flirtatious. But if she meets another woman, she may commiserate about a bad hair day or painful high heels.

When you meet someone who dresses androgynously, so that you can’t tell if they’re male or female, you probably spend much of the time just trying to figure out their gender. Not knowing someone’s gender might puzzle you and put you in a no-man’s land of social interaction. Down deep of course we’re all just human beings, but millennia of indoctrination and experiences cannot be altered by hiding your gender behind men’s clothes and being referred to as “they.”

And just to be clear, I’m talking about women who want to hide their gender and be called by a plural pronoun. Usually, men don’t do this.  Why should they? They’ve been the dominant gender physically, socially, and financially throughout history. Matriarchal cultures and goddess religions have been the exceptions.

No, it’s women authors who hide behind men’s names, like George Elliot and Acton Bell. It’s women who abbreviate their first name, like J.K. Rowling. And it’s women like Ursula LeGuin who imagined a world where gender differences didn’t exist, in her fantasy novel The Left Hand of Darkness. 

But in the real world, there is no such thing as having no gender.

We all have both male and female hormones in our bodies, both male and female tendencies. But we have only one set of genitalia which determined the box that was checked on our birth certificate under sex.

The pronoun they may refer both to men and to women, but why hide behind a plural pronoun?  Why not be proud of your gender? And if you want to get rid of gender stereotypes and social assumptions made about you based on your sex, then work towards changing society, not yourself.

Our Bodies, Ourselves

Book Review of Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy

Have you ever considered that if we were all disembodied voices, we might get along better? Many of the social problems we experience are a result of how we look: different skin colors, body sizes, genders, even clothes. That’s the problem with bodies: they not only separate us out as individuals, but can also allow us to separate into discriminatory groups. But we can’t get away from our bodies—we’re stuck with them. Willowdean Dickson has accepted that. 

She’s the main character in Julie Murphy’s book Dumplin,’ and she readily describes herself as fat, despite that it makes some people’s “lips frown and cheeks lose their color.” She is comfortable in her body, even though there are many examples of thinness around her, including her mother and her best friend, Ellen. But there are also examples of fatness, like her Aunt Lucy, who weighed in at 498 pounds, and her classmate Millie, who is “the type of fat that requires elastic waist pants because they don’t make pants with buttons and zippers in her size.” To Will, the word fat just describes her body. “It’s like how I notice some girls have big boobs or shiny hair or knobby knees.”

Being comfortable in your body is no small feat in a culture where 90 percent of women “want to change at least one aspect of their physical appearance” and where “the vast majority (81%) of 10-year old girls are afraid of being fat.” Hence the never-ending parade of new diet and self-help books that promise to change you, inside and out.

It’s a novel concept to think that you could be happy just the way you are. Despite our cultural mantra of acceptance for all, prejudice against fatness and fat people is one of the few types of discrimination that remains persistently evident in our society. That’s why the body positivity movement began. Who actually started this movement is up for grabs, but what we do know is that it’s “a social movement initially created to empower and shed light on plus size women and men, while challenging the ways in which society presents and views the physical body.” Along with helping adults look at one another differently, body positivity can also be used with teens and children to discourage bullying and judgment. But it’s the old chicken or the egg dilemma: which affects us more—how others look at us? Or how we look at ourselves? 

In the beginning of Dumplin’ (a cute if unflattering nickname given by her mother) Will is comfortable in her body, but that confidence begins to wane as she becomes romantically involved. She has a big crush on Bo, a quiet, handsome co-worker at Harpy’s Burgers and Dogs. To her utter amazement, he’s attracted to her as well and they begin meeting after work to make out. But also to her surprise, “everything in me turns to shit every time he puts his hands on me. Like, I’m not good enough. Not pretty enough. Not thin enough.” She begins to see herself through his eyes or, more accurately, as she imagines he sees her. 

Then she improbably decides—of all things—to enter a beauty pageant. The small Texas town where she lives has only one claim to fame, The Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant, the longest running beauty pageant in the state. To make matters even worse, Will’s own mother is a former winner who has run the contest for the last twenty years. It invades every corner of their small home; her mother is constantly ironing tablecloths, designing decorations, altering pageant gowns and, in between, fixing low calorie dinners for Will. So Will is trying to prove something to her mom, to society, and especially, to herself.

Dumplin’ is an entertaining, well written young adult book, but it is fiction, which by definition is not reality. Perhaps that’s why some of the action may seem unlikely and some of the characters, a bit stereotypical. But the book addresses some very real issues that probably everyone has encountered at one time or another, issues with body image, with bullying, and with self confidence. It’s interesting to observe the evolution of Will’s self image and way of thinking as she navigates the treacherous waters of romance and of social expectations. And it’s almost impossible to read this book without recalling some part of your own high school experiences—be it good or bad—especially if you’re female.

Julie Murphy is no newcomer to writing and has, in fact, written six novels, which include, among others, Side Effects May Vary and Puddin.’ Plus she has a new book due out in August 2021 entitled If the Shoe Fits, touted as “perfect for adult readers who crave contemporary, escapist rom-com.” The 2015 book Dumplin’ was made into a Netflix movie in 2018 starring Danielle Macdonald and Jennifer Aniston and received mixed reviews. Critics considered it “uninspired” but also “unrepentant fantasy.” But no matter how you look at it, this plus-size heroine is worth checking out. 

Hearing Is Believing

When they first started in 1932 for those who were blind, they were called “Talking Books.” Later we knew them as “books on tape.” Then they went to compact disks, and now they’re just titles in a “cloud library” that within a matter of minutes can be downloaded to you smartphone. 

If you haven’t discovered audiobooks yet, you are in for a treat! Today, audiobooks are the fastest growing segment of the publication industry, and for good reason. In our normally fast-paced society (when we’re not quarantined at home), finding the time to sit down and read can be challenging. Many people already take advantage of time spent driving or exercising to listen to audiobooks, but even at home you could plug in your earbuds and listen to a good book while doing the dishes, scrubbing the bathroom, or vacuuming. You may soon find that you look forward to these mundane chores, with the added benefit that your house might get cleaner than ever.

So who is likely to enjoy an audiobook? Even though statistics show that “more than half of audiobook listeners are young, ages 18-44,” don’t let that stop you. All of us can enjoy audiobooks once we become familiar with the technology, which isn’t difficult. Children will love to have an audiobook narrator read them their favorite book as they follow along in the print version or just look at the pictures. Adults of any age who are intellectually curious can listen for the purpose of learning or for entertainment. Both nonfiction and fiction titles are readily available, with more being produced all the time. In The Untold History of the Talking Book, author Matthew Rubery says that “audiobooks are for people who hate reading and for those of us who love reading. [They] are for people who can’t read, and for people who can’t read enough.” 

So you might be wondering, What advantage does an audiobook have over a print book? Right from the start, audiobooks might seem more personal. You hear the voice of an actual person, and sometimes that person has a special connection to the work, as when a book is read by its author, as with Michelle Obama’s Becoming, Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child, and Rachel Maddow’s Blowout. And who better to know how it should be read than the person who wrote it? She knows just where to put the emphasis or what is intended as sarcasm.  Even if it’s not read by the author, often an audiobook by a British author will be read by someone with a British accent, or the narrator may use different voices for different characters. Sometimes there is even more than one narrator; the greatest example of this is probably George Saunder’s audiobook Lincoln in the Bardo which has a separate narrator for each 166 characters! Some of the narrators are celebrities, like Susan Sarandon, some are Saunder’s own wife and children. It sounds like a Broadway play that has been recorded.

Another advantage of audiobooks is that they don’t require you to get in the car and go to the library—a benefit at any time but especially now when libraries are temporarily closed. In the same vein, you don’t have to return an audiobook either; when it’s due, it simply disappears from your downloads. This prevents you from ever having overdue fines; however, it can be quite a disappointment if you’re not yet finished the book. Sometimes you can renew it before it’s automatically returned, but if there is someone waiting, you’ll just have to get back in line. 

And as I’ve already mentioned, you can listen to audiobooks while your eyes and hands are busy with something else. I have always liked to read at the end of the day before going to sleep, so now I just plug in my earbuds and listen from the downloaded book on my phone. This has the advantage of saving on eye strain and doesn’t require the use of a reading light that might keep my partner awake.

So if audiobooks are really this great, why isn’t everyone listening to them? Daniel Willingham, a psychologist and leading researcher on reading, says that today he is most frequently asked, “Is it cheating if I listen to an audiobook for my book club?” Why should we think of it as “cheating”? Well, you’re not sitting down and savoring the text. You can’t go back and re-read a sentence you may not have understood or that you just particularly liked, nor can you keep the book on a shelf for future reference. One of the advantages of audiobooks—that you can listen while you’re doing something else—is also a drawback, since multitasking by definition means you’re not giving any one thing your full attention. When you sit down to read, you are focusing on the text. With audiobooks you can’t highlight or underline or write comments in the margins. Some dislike audiobooks’ lack of organization cues—you might not know when a new chapter or section begins, and you can’t “see” how far along you are in the book. Another disadvantage I’ve noticed is that, when I listen in bed before going to sleep, I sometimes fall asleep with the audiobook going and it continues to play without me. But designers of audiobook apps are addressing some of these issues, including sleep timers to automatically stop the book and indications of how far along you are in the book, giving a percentage of completion.

But seriously, is listening to a book inferior to reading it? Certainly it is different, but a recent study compared the comprehension and retention of various groups that listened to an audiobook/ read an e-book/ or did both, and “No statistically significant differences were found [in either comprehension or retention] for any analyses pertaining to effects of the three different instructional conditions.” Of course, how well we retain information varies with each person and with the material to be retained. Non-fiction that contains many facts and statistics is more difficult to remember than is the plot of a novel. And some scientists have theorized that women retain information from audiobooks better than men, because we all know that women are better listeners.

So if I’ve intrigued you with the possibilities of audiobooks—and I hope I have—where do you find them?  The best place to begin is at your local library where they are free for three weeks just by downloading to your smartphone. You can look up audiobooks in the OWWL system, (Ontario, Wayne, Wyoming, and Livingston counties), using the OverDrive or Libby app. Most of these books are unabridged, or read in their entirety. Another other good source of free audiobooks is LibriVox, which specializes in classics and foreign language books read by volunteers. Subscription sites for audiobooks include Audible, owned by Amazon, which offers 200,000 titles; Kobo, a large service offering 1.5 million titles; Audiobooks.com, which offers 100,000 books; Downpour, which has both a subscription program and a rental service; and Scribd, which provides both print books and audiobooks.  

Some view the recent rise of audiobooks as being closely tied to the popularity of podcasts. Both, after all, are something we listen to. Capitalizing on that similarity, Scribd has begun their own podcast called ScribdChat which host interviews with authors on a variety of subjects and books.

So if you’re hard pressed to find the time to sit down and read, consider listening instead. A wealth of audiobooks is just waiting.

Not Your Average Fairytale

Stepsister, by Jennifer Donnelly, 2019, 342 pages.

Some stories just won’t die. They are told and retold, tweaked and changed, made into plays, movies, operas, ballets, and songs. One such story is Cinderella. In Marina Warner’s 2014 book Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale, she says that fairy tales are “stories that try to find the truth and give us glimpses of greater things.” In the story of Cinderella, classified as a “persecuted heroine” tale, the “greater thing” might be the eventual success of the underdog, and we would all like to believe “the truth” of poetic justice, that people ultimately get what they deserve.

But Anna Rooth in her doctoral dissertation entitled The Cinderella Cycle reckons that “The fact that over 900 versions have been written is a testament to the ‘potent’ power of this story.” Okay. But if there are so many versions in so many languages, why would Jennifer Donnelly the author of the new book Stepsister choose to write another book about Cinderella? And why would you want to read it?

The simple answer is because this book takes the fairy tale in a whole new direction and to a whole new level. This time it’s not about Cinderella; it’s about one of her supposedly ugly, wicked stepsisters, whose name is Isabelle, whom we’ve never heard from before. Finally, we’ll get her side of the story.

Stepsister is similar to Gregory Maguire’s 1995 book Wicked, in which the reader comes to learn about the life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West, a similarly infamous character. In Wicked, we’re told how the wicked witch grew up, what forces acted upon her to make her the way she was, and how she felt about having green skin. Stepsister does the same with Isabelle. She doesn’t have to worry about being green, but she does have to worry about how to walk after she cutting off her toes to fit into the glass slipper.

The fact is, Isabelle didn’t really want to lock Cinderella in her room when the prince came visiting, and she certainly didn’t want to cut off her toes. She was just trying to please her demanding mother and save her struggling family from penury. Plus, she was trying to conform to contemporary ideas of what women should be.

Donnelly goes to great pains to paint Isabelle as an average person, with her own dreams and her own failings. As children, Isabelle, Ella, and Octavia, the other stepsister, all play together and get along famously, until someone tells Ella that she is pretty, and tells Isabelle that she is ugly. Even though she is envious of Ella and treats her cruelly, Isabelle is aware of how badly she is acting; she recognizes her shortcomings and regrets her behavior. This makes her a main character we can sympathize with.

The Prologue begins with a couple of unlikely characters, an old crone named Fate and a dashing young nobleman named Chance who are fighting over the map of Isabelle’s life. Throughout the book, these two characters, in true fairy tale fashion, keep trying to influence Isabelle’s life one way or the other. Fate, who drew the map, asserts that “Mortals do not like uncertainty. They do not like change.” She believes that we are foolish creatures who blindly follow the maps she makes of our lives. But Chance insists that, given the opportunity, humans will sometimes take risks and move beyond the limited lives Fate has mapped out for them. He cuts a dashing figure and “His eyes promised the world, and everything in it.” He regards Isabelle as a challenge and wants to “give her the chance to change the path she is on. The chance to make her own path.” Risks often present very attractive rewards, but they are also, well, risky. So Fate and Chance make a bet over the direction Isabelle’s life will take.

The story’s beginning does not bode well for Isabelle; she cuts off her toes in order to fit into the glass slipper and almost convinces the prince that she is the one he seeks but she is betrayed by a white dove who flies down from a magical tree and tells him about Isabelle’s duplicity, tells him that blood is coming from her shoe and that she is not “the one.” Ella is the one, and it is she who rides off to marry the prince and leaves Isabelle, Octavia, and her stepmother behind. They become infamous and reviled in the town of Saint-Michel where they live. (Donnelly is working from the French version of Cinderella written in 1697 by Charles Perrault.)

So what is Isabelle really like? Well, she’s definitely not like Ella. She’s not passive and sweet tempered as a seventeenth-century woman was supposed to be. As a child she was a tomboy who liked to climb trees and play at pretend sword fighting with her friend Felix. But she is thoroughly chastened by the whole glass slipper episode and decides that yes, she has treated Ella badly, and she’s going to make up for it by becoming a better person. So she decides to do good deeds and begins by taking some much needed eggs from her family’s chickens to an orphanage filled with poor children. But it doesn’t go so well. The children have heard of her. They encircle her and chant ugly rhymes:

Stepsister, stepsister,
Mother says the devil kissed her!
Make her swallow five peach pits,
Then cut her up in little bits?

Then they begin throwing the eggs and they “pelted her with them as hard as they could.” Isabelle knows that she “should have run straight out of the courtyard and back to her cart. But Isabelle was not one to turn tail.” It is this spunk that will serve her well in the end, when she discovers an invading army bent on destroying Saint-Michel and is magically transformed into the general of her own army.

In true fairy tale fashion, she ends by taking a chance, fighting successfully, and being recognized as a national hero. Women, Donnelly seems to be saying, should not feel limited by their looks or by societal norms. Not if they’re willing to follow their heart and take a chance. The author even throws in the twist that Ella is not, in fact, perfect; she admits to having thwarted the love between Felix and Isabelle, who nevertheless come together at the end.

Jennifer Donnelly is an American author who has written many books of historical fiction as well fairy tale fiction. Even though Stepsister is classified as a book for Young Adults, it is very well written and explores relevant topics that provide food for thought for readers of any age.

The Twisting Path of My Life's Work

Like most young people, I was unsure what I wanted to do with my life.  I knew that I liked to write.  I just didn't know what to do with it or how to use it to make a living. I guess that's why my path wasn't straight.  In fact, it twisted and turned all over the place.

I started out doing the thing most often expected of English majors--teaching. I hadn't really wanted to teach, and shortly after I started, a fellow teacher told me: Those who can, do; Those who can't, teach. I knew that I wanted to be a doer.

So I went sideways on the path and took a writing-related job in industry as a technical editor.  If there are two sides to your brain, the critical side and and creative side, editing is an activity firmly encamped on the critical side. It's all about rules and correctness. It spelled death to my imagination and led to brain stagnation. I edited reports about solid propellant rocket motors--ugh!--while the company I worked for was responsible for the deaths of seven people aboard the space shuttle when their rocket motors failed.  As soon as I could, I escaped.

Then I went backward and did something barely related to writing. I took a part-time job as a reader for a blind attorney. The part time bit allowed me some writing time, but once again the job itself was deadly boring. I read aloud trust agreements and wills to a lawyer who worked for a bank, and in the short time I was there, I learned that the only people who truly mattered were those who had lots of money, and they went to great lengths to keep it out of the hands of their descendants, as if they still belonged to own the money after death.

In between all my jobs in academia, industry, and banking, I wrote non-fiction articles for newspapers and magazines. For a while, I had a regular gig writing articles for a magazine called LifeSports, where I wrote about everything from windsurfing to shuffleboard. It was fun, but the subjects I wrote about didn't move or inspire me. I loved novels. Stories make me think, give me insight into myself and the world. Beautifully written books with a thoughtful message help make the world a better place, and I wanted to do that. I wanted to touch someone's heart, perhaps give him a new insight or cause her to consider something differently.

Most writers are not in it for the money; they write because they're inspired, because they love the written word, because they're driven, and because they recognize that writing is the most satisfying thing they can do. There are, of course, trials and tribulations that go along with it. Generally, writers need a patron or an alternate source of income that allows them time to write. I was slow in figuring all this out, and it wasn't until late middle age that I finally found the way to incorporate writing into my life. My writing life is possible only because of my perseverance and because of my beloved husband.

So don't despair if you can’t seem to find the time to write.  The road is often twisting and steep. Just always keep your eyes on the page.