I finished Esther. Whew! It was quite a ride.
So, Esther is this young woman full of radical modern ideas who falls in love with an Episcopalian priest. She falls in love but she cannot reconcile her freewheeling ideas with her fiancé’s church. “I never saw you conduct a service,” she tells him, “without feeling as though you were a priest in a Pagan temple, centuries apart from me. At any moment I half expected to see you bring out a goat or a ram and sacrifice it on the high altar.” The novel is about her inner struggle. Will she subsume herself and marry him? Will she find a way to reconcile her beliefs with his, and make a happy marriage without squashing herself or him? Will the force of his charismatic preacher personality lead her to see the light and renounce her views and make a happy marriage that way? Will the force of her charismatic strong-woman personality induce him to leave the church? Or will she keep the courage of her convictions and break off her engagement?
That’s the whole story. There’s no subplot to speak of, and only a handful of characters. Reading it was excruciating. Esther’s dilemma is not resolved until the very last page. The. Very. Last. Page. This book was either going to SUCK (if she caved) or ROCK (if she didn’t). There couldn’t be anything in between. I debated with myself whether or not to reveal here which way the book went. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but in this case I don’t think it would spoil anything if I tell you that Esther indeed rocks. In fact, I wish the suspense hadn’t been such a huge factor in my reading. I will have to come back to this again some day.
Aside from the suspense, there was much to enjoy in this book. Every single character, including the minister, was sympathetic and likeable. Esther’s invalid father was sheer delight. Here’s a bit of flavor: “‘I was just wondering,’ said he, ‘whether I could read five minutes longer without a stimulant. Do you know that indiscriminate reading is a fiendish torture. No convict could stand it. I seldom take up a book in these days without thinking how much more amusing it would be to jolt off on a bright day at the head of a funeral procession. Between the two ways of amusing one’s-self, I am principled against books.’” Ha ha!
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So that was Penguin Classic novel number two. Next up, and already ordered through inter-library loan, is Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier, translated by Frank Davison. I know nothing about the book or its author except the brief description in the Penguin Classics Complete Annotated Listing, which says that it “follows a young man killed in action in World War I, and is a masterly exploration of the transition from boyhood to manhood.” All righty! Anyone know how to pronounce “meaulnes?”
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At the new branch library, you know, the one where I can actually browse the first couple of shelves of adult fiction while Daniel plays with the contraption, the one I seem to write about in every other post? Well, today I found Paul Auster’s The Red Notebook. And read it in one sitting. I’ll post about it just as soon as I can gather my thoughts. Wow! WOW!
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I am also planning to write a post in which I regale you with my, uh, garden. The title of that post will be “Pearls Before Swine.” The pearl being this incredible earthworm-rich, carefully-amended, well-aerated soil we inherited from the master gardener who used to live in our house. The swine, of course, is yours truly.
6 Comments
I never did thnk of a poem.
You need to reveal the ending. How can I take credit for reading the book unless I know how it ends? Sheesh. :)
Thanks for this, Julie. Adams is a Modern Library author, too, (“The Education of Henry Adams”) and I’ve never bought that title because I had never heard of him and didn’t know what to expect. I think I’ll see if the library has “Esther”, it sounds like just the kind of thing I’d enjoy.
Ha ha ha! I too am being swinish with my pearls, but they are not dead yet. And I’ve been reading the Old Testament, law of Moses chapters, and thinking along those same lines as Esther. Sounds like a very interesting one . . . I wish you would create a typelist on the sides of these Penguins and your rating of each. That would keep me busy for a long while.
Fred, ha ha, I’ll email ya.
Ella, I want to read Education too. When I mentioned Esther to my neighbor, the English Prof who teaches 19th Century American Lit, he recommended Education very enthusiastically, described a chapter had haunted him ever since grad school, etc., etc. Caveat: he also liked The Virginian. :)
Inkling, good idea. Stay tuned for new page.
Julia, Meaulnes is pronounced “mowln”. I’m afraid the description you read is misleading. It’s the author who got killed in the early days of WWI, not the MC. But you might like the story, which has very deep feelings and tangled relationships. It’s based loosely on real events: the author did meet and fall in love with a beautiful young woman who was already engaged. The book was written between 1910 and 1913. Have a nice reading!
I have just discovered Paul Auster this past year, and was enthralled by his “Book of Illusions.”
As for “Le Grand Meaulnes,” I am sorry that the library so cruelly snatched it back from you, because I recently read it and it becomes really phenomenal in the second half. A totally different sort of book. I may even have described it as “luminous” in my blog. :)