The Art of Reading: Girl Reading in a Sunlit Room by Carl Holsoe

The Hand That First Held Mine - Maggie O'Farrell

     In The Hand That First Held Mine, Maggie O'Farrell explores the unreliablity of memory and of the stories we are told about ourselves.  She weaves two storylines into an unforgettable, haunting tale that is one of my favorite reads so far this year.
     Lexie Sinclair runs away from home to the bohemian London Soho of the 1950's.  She falls in love with Innes Kent, a magazine editor/art collector with a messy personal life.  Lexie rises in the male-dominated world of publishing but her personal life is not so charmed.  She becomes a single mother without any support from her family who disowned her when she became involved with Innes. 
     In present-day London, Elina is recovering from the traumatic caesarean birth of her son in which she almost lost her life.  At first, she can't remember the birth.  She and her partner, Ted, must reconstruct what happened, filling in the gaps in what is remembered.
     The connection between the two stories is not evident at first.  But Ted , who has been prone to mental blackouts since childhood, begins to realize that there are things he must remember about his past.  As he does so, the links between Lexie, Innes, Ted, and Elina are revealed bit by bit. 
     The themes of infatuation, passion, love, loss and grief thread through the novel along with that of family secrets and lies that can haunt future generations.  Without revealing more of the story, I will just say that the novel is one you shouldn't miss.

~ Frances

Waxing Poetic: The Moment I Knew My Life Had Changed by Maria Mazzioti Gillan

The Moment I Knew My Life Had Changed

It was not until later
that I knew, recognized the moment
for what it was, my life before it,
a gray landscape, shapeless and misty;
my life after, flowering full and leafy
as the cherry trees that only today
have torn into bloom.
Imagine: my cousin at 19, tall,
slender. She worked in New York City.
For my thirteenth birthday she took me
to New York. We ate at the Russian Tea Room
where I was uncertain about which fork to use,
intimidated by the women in their hats and furs,
by the waiters who watched me
as I struggled with the huge hunk of bread
in the center of the onion soup in its steep bowl.
When we were ready to leave, I tried to give the tip
back to my cousin. I thought she had forgotten it.
She said, "No, it's for the waiter!"
On 57th Street a man in a camel coat bumped into me,
rushed on by. My cousin said, "That was Eddie Fisher,"
but I said, "He's too short. It can't be."
I felt let down that Eddie Fisher,
the star I was in love with that year, was so rude
he never even said "excuse me." Then we went into the theater
sat in the front row. the stage sprang into colored light, and
the glittery costumes, the singing, the magical story,
drew me in, made me feel in that moment,
that I would learn again and again,
the miraculous language, the music of it.
My life, turning away from the constricted world
of the 19th Street tenement, formed a line
almost perpendicular to that old life,
I moved toward it, breathed in this new air,
racing toward a world filled with poems and
music and books that freed me from everything
that could have chained me to the ground.

The Art of Reading: Portrait of a Young Woman Reading by Dean Cornwell

The Art of Reading: Love Sonnets by Marie Spartali Stillman