Motherhood - Shelia Heti

My sister suggested this a few years ago and I finally got to it.  The authors chose a unique way of writing, using 3 coin flips to answer 'yes' or 'no' and responding based on the result of the coin flip.  She leads us through several years of trying to decide if she wants to have children before her biological clock runs out.  The story read like a stream of consciousness as she struggles with the expectations and norms of society and her own personal desires.  A good read.

Quotes:

"What is the better thing to steer your life by? Whatever seems to bring happiness? Yes.  So your values, happiness and the things the people around you need.  Those are he things by which you should steer your life."

"I have only two choices: to trust him or be suspicious of him; to believe in him or to doubt.  Then I ought to make the choice to trust him, because what good does it do me to be suspicious or to doubt?  That is causing myself pain in advance of any real pain."

"Happiness and joy are feeling like you belong to the world, and are at home in the world, at the level of nature, humanity and time."

"And you are never lonely while writing, I thought, it's impossible to be--categorically impossible--because writing is a relationship.  You're in a relationship with some force that is more mysterious than yourself."

"Only when a woman is no longer attractive to men, can she be left alone for enough moments to actually think."

Published: 2018  Read: June 2022  Genre: Memoir/Philosophy 

Disobedience - Jane Hamilton

I've read "The Book of Ruth" and "Laura Ryder's Masterpiece" and tried to read "A Map of the World" by the same author. This one gave me the same feeling as her previous ones - almost worth reading, but in the end, unsatisfying.

This title is the story of a teenager who reads his mother's email and finds out she is having an affair.  Over the course of about a year, he angst over her infidelity.  Intertwined is the story of his father, a history teacher and his sister, a preteen obsessed with the civil war and its reenactments.  It's a story of family relationships and family tolerances, secrets and weaknesses.

For me, the son's character was inconsistent; at times sounding childish and at others mouthing adult observations for the author's convenience.  I just didn't care much for any of the characters.

Published: 2000  Read: March 2016  Genre: Fiction