Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende

Hey guys, let's get this blog going again!

Last week I finished Isabel Allende’s wonderful book, Daughter of Fortune. I had never read any Allende before but knew she was a legend. She did not disappoint! Daughter of Fortune was a beautiful read about a Chilean girl’s quest to find her sweetheart during the California gold rush. I wanted to write about some of the important themes here, because it really made me think about a lot of interesting questions. I will try to do so without giving away too many spoilers, because if you haven’t read this yet, I highly recommend it!

One of the big themes of the book was how difficult life was for women during this period. The female characters are severely limited. If they are not trapped by Victorian standards of respectability, class boundaries, or health issues, then they are prostitutes. Eliza (the main character), goes to California to find her lover, but I think the journey is more than just about a man. It is also her desperate attempt to escape the limits of her gender. In California, she has to pretend to be a man than to risk living amongst the miners as a woman. In the book’s conclusion, she makes a choice to live the way she wants. In overcoming the limits of Victorian womanhood, she creates her own freedom.

Thinking about Eliza’s agency in shaping her own destiny makes me think about the meaning of the title. Is she really a daughter of Fortune, of Chance? Or does she create her own destiny? When Eliza leaves Chile for California, she does not go on her uncle’s boat, named Fortuna. Instead she boards a different boat named Emilia. I don’t think this would be an important detail except for the tie to the title. She doesn’t decide to just go along with her destiny, as some other women (and some men) in the book do and as Victorian standards of behavior and morality dictate. She chooses her destiny, something women (like Eliza, or the Emilia that the boat is named after) are not supposed to do. I think this female agency is one of the book’s most important and powerful themes. Eliza’s search for her love is part of a broader quest for the freedom to make her own decisions, to shape her own identity, to live freely even as a woman—in effect, to create her own Fortune.

Allende also explores the themes of race, power, love, memory, identity, and the masks we wear to deceive ourselves and others. This book is very rich and gave me a lot to think about. I’d highly recommend it for that reason—it’s not just a great book of historical fiction with an adventurous plot, it’s as thought-provoking as it is entertaining. I also really loved the way the book was written. Margaret Sayers Peden, the translator, has done a wonderful job. It really is beautifully written. I stopped a number of times to just to re-read certain sentences and marvel at how perfectly crafted they were. Allende also gives us a rich portrait of life during the California Gold Rush—the filthy conditions, the poverty, the ubiquitous vice. She also creates lovely, elaborate backstories for several of the more minor characters. This makes you feel like you really know them and can understand what led each of the characters to this particular moment.

I am definitely an Isabel Allende fan now, and will be reading more of her books in the future. What’s everyone else reading? I’d love to hear about your favorite recent reads!

 

Summer Book Club

I think it would be really fun to do a book club this summer. We'd pick a book that we all want to read, read it, and then have a discussion about it (either as we go or as soon as everyone's done) on the blog. So, the big question is... what should we read? I'll throw out a few that are on my list:

-Like Water for Chocolate

-The House of the Seven Gables

-though, Hawthorne is sometimes super boring.

-The Omnivore's Dilemma

-A Room of One's Own

-A Passage to India

-Reading Lolita in Tehran

-The Physic Book of Deliverance Dane

-this one is a NYT Bestseller and the author is actually a colleague of mine at BU. We have the same advisor and so I've met her a few times. Word is they're making a movie out of this book, though I don't know how far along the process is. Anyway, it's about Salem and witches and it switches back and forth between the 1692 people and a researcher who is studying them.

We don't have to read any of these, I just wanted to throw a few out there. Other suggestions?

Leaving Unknown by Kerry Reichs

So. After making my way through two non-fiction books highlighting, however entertainingly, two very alarming subjects (the unsustainable way we eat and the flawed system into which we deliver our children) I needed a fluff piece. Some mind candy. And I needed it fast. I found this particular gem on the Sony Books website one evening last week and a few minutes later it was ready and waiting on my Reader.

The story follows Maeve, a free-spirited twenty-something through a coming-of-age journey across the country with her rusted out classic car and a talking bird. The characters she encounters help her come to terms with the past she’s running from, and the future she’s racing toward.

Perhaps the writing is a bit stilted, but you kind of get used to it (how many of us read Twilight??) and, well, the plot is pretty predictable with the exception of one twist that actually did surprise me. However, if you’re looking for sweet, feel-good, brain candy this could very well be your book.

Note to boys: in the off chance you were tempted, this might not be your bag... just sayin'.

Pushed, by Jennifer Block

This is another non-fiction read that I recently finished. I promise I'll put up a novel here soon.

Pushed is written by a journalist who, having never been pregnant or given birth, set about uncovering the reasons why the USA, with the highest medical spending, per capita, in the world (as we all know from recent rhetoric) ranks number 27 in infant and maternal mortality. Why, with everything we know and all the technology we have, are infant and maternal mortality and morbidity rates actually rising in some areas of our country?

The answer, according to the author, could potentially rest in the custom of involving surgeons - highly trained experts in all manner of pathological and emergency situations - in what, in many cases, amounts to a normal physiological process.

Block delves into reasons behind the 30+% Cesarean Section rate in our country, and what she finds is more complex than the oft-cited doctor convenience and skyrocketing malpractice insurance premiums). She explores the rise and fall and rise again of midwives and the struggles they face just to practice in some states. And finally, she questions the efficacy (and, potentially, the danger) of many of the interventions that have become standard practice in labor and delivery rooms all across the nation.

This is an issue that is near and dear to my heart for obvious reasons. However, it is also a very interesting take on the history of birth over the last century. Not sure if it's up any of y'alls' alleys but I'm willing to lend if you want to check it out!

Mandatory Book List for Girls

In no particular order:

The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Ella Enchanted
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
Little Women
Shabanu

What else?

I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore

This book is an entertaining and action-packed. Well, not action-packed precisely, but it's still really good. It was written by that guy who pretended that his book about his addictions was true, but it turned out that he was never an addict. There was a huge scandal, I think he appeared on Oprah, but he is still an amazing writer. Pittacus Lore is actually a character in the story.

I Am Number Four follows a humanoid alien named Number Four. He and eight other aliens escaped from their home planet, Lorien, before it was destroyed by the Mogadorians. The nine have special powers called legacies that, when they develop, will help them protect themselves and Lorien. There is a charm placed on the nine which makes it impossible for the Mogadorians to kill them unless it is in order of their numbers. The charm also creates a scar on the right ankle of the living aliens when one of their number is killed. This way, the remaining aliens will know when they are next. The first three are already dead.

Number Four and his guardian are on the run when the third scar appears and they end up in Paradise, Ohio. There Number Four has some high school adventures while trying to train his emerging legacies. I would say more, but that would spoil the book.

This has also been turned into a movie, which looks fantastic, but apparently it doesn't stick close to the book. I would recommend reading the book first, but that might ruin the movie for some people. If you liked The Hunger Games, I think you will enjoy this book as well.

Decisive Day: the Battle for Bunker Hill

For a class last week, I read a set of books about the military part of the Revolution: A People Armed and Numerous, by John Shy (a collection of essays- very readable- which I’d recommend for anyone interested in a social history of the military during the Revolution); The Glorious Cause, by Robert Middlekauff (which I did not read, but faked my way through); Decisive Day, by Ralph Ketchum (a book about the Battle of Bunker Hill); The Valley Forge Winter, by Wayne Bodle (which I would not recommend. It’s well researched but it’s very dense, and it doesn’t have nearly enough maps to be able to tell what or where it is he’s talking about most of the time); and A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783, by Charles Royster (which I wish I’d been able to read more of, but would still recommend. Like A People Armed and Numerous, it’s a social history of the military and tries to explain why colonists fought and what drove them to get involved).

I thought I’d focus this entry on Ralph Ketchum’s Decisive Day: The Battle for Bunker Hill. It was the most enjoyable read of the set—highly readable and written like a story. Bunker Hill is underrated. Most people know about or have heard of Lexington/Concord, Saratoga, Yorktown, yet Bunker Hill was just as crucial and just as much of a turning point as the victory at Saratoga which led the French to enter the war against the British. After Lexington and Concord (April 1775), war with Britain was still not inevitable. Colonists were angry at the bloodshed, but reconciliation may have still been possible. Colonists also gained some confidence at Lexington and Concord, dealing the British a huge blow when they picked off retreating British soldiers all the way back to Boston. But Concord was not fought by an American army. It was volunteers and militiamen fighting against a small contingent of British troops. How would an American army, made up of ragtag farmers and apprentices and old men, stand a chance against the disciplined, well-trained professional British army in a real battle? There were a lot of doubts on the American side, a lot of confidence amongst the Brits. In June 1775, though, the newly formed American army proved that it could stand a chance. Though they technically had to retreat and cede Bunker Hill to the British (important because of its high position and the ability of soldiers there to guard or attack Boston), the British suffered an enormous number of casualties and lost nearly half of their officers. They also suffered psychologically. General Howe, one of Britain’s commanders in chief, never underestimated the American army again, and in later battles, never waged a frontal attack on entrenched American troops, so as to avoid a disaster like the battle at Bunker Hill.

The Americans lost men but gained confidence in themselves, the new army, and the Continental Congress, which they now turned to with faith in its ability to lead them through a war. They did, however, lose one of their best men and most able leaders: Joseph Warren. An officer, Warren died covering for his retreating men. His body was not found initially, but the Americans got word that his body lay mutilated in a grave with some other soldiers, thus dishonored by the British. The Americans found out where he was buried, dug him up, and Paul Revere identified him by two false teeth that he had personally put in not long before the battle. Warren almost surely would have gone on to be one of the great leaders of the Revolution. He died bravely, protecting his men who retreated, the last to leave. A movie really could be made about Bunker Hill.

I’d highly recommend Ketchum’s Decisive Day. It’s not too bogged down with military jargon and maneuvers, and it reads like a story. It helps the reader gain a sense of the significance of the battle of Bunker Hill, a crucial though largely ignored event in the War for Independence.