READING AWAY, July 20 - August 7, 2011

at the NORTHERN CAPITALS

Copenhagen, Denmark

Oslo, Norway

Stockholm, Sweden

Helsinki, Finland

St. Petersburg, Russia

(All city photos from Wikipedia)

 

My Book Companions

are books that came highly recommended by my favorite bloggers.
Except for two books, they are all on my Kindle.

(I know, it's a lot, but I am a fast reader and I always want to have choices.)

Be Back Soon!!!

178. NUMBER the STARS

Lois Lowry 1989

Another children's book that drives home a big sigh!! Based on real events that happened during the evacuation of Jews from Denmark, WWII, this short story is very touching. On the street of Osterbrogade, in a small neighborhood in northeast Copenhagen, live best friends Annemarie Johansen and Ellen Rosen. Over the last three years, they have lived under the Nazi eyes. Aware of the Rosen family's impending capture and relocation, the Johansens pretend Ellen is Annemarie's sister. Later, an elaborate escape from Denmark to Sweden is set into motion, (with the help of Annemarie's mother, her Uncle Henrik, and her late sister's fiance Peter Nielsen) and ten-year old Annemarie's bravery shines through.

'"I'll race you to the corner, Ellen!" Annemarie adjusted the thick leather pack on her back so that her schoolbooks balanced evenly. "Ready?" She looked at her best friend.'(opening lines)

'Annemarie stared up. There were two of them. That meant two helmets, two sets of cold eyes glaring at her, and four tall shiny boots planted firmly on the sidewalk, blocking her path to home.... And it meant two rifles, gripped in the hands of the soldiers. She stared at the rifles first. Then,finally, she looked into the face of the soldier who had ordered her to halt.... "Why are you running?" the harsh voice asked. His Danish was very poor. Three years, Annemarie thought with contempt. Three years they've been in our country, and still they can't speak the language.'(3)

"When will there be cupcakes again?"
"When the war ends," Mrs. Johnson said. She glanced through the window, down to the street corner where the soldiers stood, their faces impassive beneath the metal helmets. "When the soldiers leave."(10)

"Who is that man who rides past here every morning on his horse?" the German soldier had asked.
Papa said he had smiled to himself, amused that the German soldier did not know. He listened while the boy answered.
"He is our king," the boy told the soldier. "He is the King of Denmark."
"Where is his bodyguard?" the soldier had asked.... "The boy looked right at the soldier, and he said, "All of Denmark is his bodyguard."(13-14)

'Annemarie relaxed the clenched fingers of her right hand, which still clutched Ellen's necklace. She looked down, and saw that she had imprinted the Star of David into her palm.'(49)

'Annemarie looked around and nodded her head in agreement. The house and the meadows that surrounded it were so much a part of her childhood, a part of her life, that she didn't often look at them with fresh eyes. But now she did, seeing Ellen's pleasure. And it was true. They were beautiful.
The little red-roofed farmhouse was very old, its chimney crooked and even the small, shuttered windows tilted at angles. A bird's nest, wispy with straw, was half hidden in the corner where the roof met the wall above a bedroom window. Nearby, a gnarled tree was still speckled with a few apples now long past ripe.'(60)

'The words were unfamiliar to her, and she tried to listen, tried to understand, tried to forget the war and the Nazis, tried not to cry, tried to be brave. The night breeze moved the dark curtains at the open windows. Outside she knew, the sky was speckled with stars. How could anyone number them one by one, as the psalm said? There were too many. The sky was too big.'(87)

'Light woke her. But it was not really morning, not yet. It was only the first hint of a slightly lightening sky: a pale gleam at the edge of the meadow, a sign that far away somewhere, to the east where Sweden still slept, morning would be coming soon. Dawn would creep across the Swedish farmland and coast; then it would wash little Denmark with light and move across the North Sea to wake Norway.'(98)

'Mama spoke quickly, her voice tense. "Annemarie, go into the house and get the small basket on the table. Quickly, quickly. Put an apple into it, and some cheese. Put this packet underneath; do you understand? Hurry."'(104)

'Surely that gift -- the gift of a world of human decency -- is the one that all countries hunger for still. I hope that this story of Denmark, and its people, will remind us all that such a world is possible.'(Afterword, p.137)

a Random House Children's Book edition
132 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

177. BLINDNESS

Jose Saramago 1997
Translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero

If you are weak in your heart (or in your stomach), this magnificently written book may not be for you. It is hard enough that you will be groping for the conversations buried within the lengthy paragraphs and the chapters that are undesignated. But harder still is where the story takes you: the dreadful abyss of the haunting life after an epidemic of 'white blindness' hits a city and the entire population (except one) goes blind. The main characters are the first people to go blind, led by the sole exception, the doctor's wife. She becomes the eyes for the doctor, the wife of the first blind man, the boy with the squint, the old man with the black eyepatch, the girl with the dark glasses, and later, the dog of tears. Vivid, detailed and organized, this atmospheric book exposes the frailness of humanity in a way that is both disturbing and thought-provoking. Is there anything we can't bear or won't do when the unimaginable thing happens?

'The amber light came on. Two of the cars ahead accelerated before the red light appeared. At the pedestrian crossing the sign of a green man lit up. The people who were waiting began to cross the road, stepping on the white stripes painted on the black surface of the asphalt, there is nothing less like a zebra, however, that is what it is called.'(opening lines)

'Who would have believed it. Seen merely at a glance, the man's eyes seem healthy, the iris looks bright, luminous, the sclera white, as compact as porcelain. The eyes wide open, the wrinkled skin of the face, his eyebrows suddenly screwed up, all this, as anyone can see, signifies that he is distraught with anguish. With a rapid movement, what was in sight has disappeared behind the man's clenched fists, as if he were still trying to retain inside his mind the final image captured, a round red light at the traffic lights. I am blind, I am blind, he repeated in despair as they helped him to get out of the car, and the tears welling up made those eyes which he claimed were dead, shine even more.'(2)

'Like most people, he had often played as a child at pretending to be blind, and, after keeping his eyes closed for five minutes, he had reached the conclusion that blindness, undoubtedly a terrible affliction, might still be relatively bearable if the unfortunate victim had retained sufficient memory, not just of the colours, but also of forms and planes, surfaces and shapes, assuming of course, that this one was not born blind. He had even reach the point of thinking that the darkness in which the blind live was nothing other than the simple absence of light, that what we call blindness was something that simply covered the appearance of being the things, leaving them intact behind their black veil. Now, on the contrary, here he was, plunged into a whiteness so luminous, so total, that it swallowed up rather than absorbed, not just the colours, but the very things and beings, thus making them twice as invisible.'(6)

'The shouting had died down, now a confusion of sounds was coming from the hallway, these were the blind, driven like sheep, bumping into each other, crammed together in the doorways, some lost their sense of direction and ended up in other wards, but the majority, stumbling along, huddled into groups or dispersed one by one, desperately waving their hands in the air like people drowning, burst into the ward in a whirlwind, as if being pushed from the outside by a bulldozer.'(67)

'... if, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. The good and evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much-talked-of immortality.'(78)

'If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals, words she repeated so often that the rest of the ward ended up by transforming her advice into a maxim, a dictum, into a doctrine, a rule of life, words which deep down were so simple and elementary, probably it was just that state of mind, propitious to any understanding of needs and circumstances, that contributed, even if only in a minor way to the warm welcome the old man with the black eyepatch found there when he peered through the door and asked those inside, Any chance of a bed here.'(116)

'How can we play a game if we cannot see what we are playing, asked the wife of the first blind man, Well, not a game exactly, each of us must say what we saw at the moment we went blind, That could be embarrassing, someone pointed out, Those who do not wish to take part in the game can remain silent, the important thing is that no one should try to invent anything, Give us an example, said the doctor, Certainly, replied the old man with the black eyepatch, I went blind when I was looking at my blind eye, What do you mean, It's very simple, I felt as if the inside of the empty orbit were inflamed and I removed the patch to satisfy my curiosity '(127)

'We're in an impossible situation, it has been impossible ever since we came into this place, yet we go on putting up with it, You're an optimist, doctor, No, I'm not an optimist, but I cannot imagine anything worse than our present existence, Well, I'm not entirely convinced that there are limits to misfortune and evil,'(144)

'Little by little, under the murky yellowish light of the dim lamps, the ward descended into a deep slumber, bodies comforted by the three meals consumed that day, as had rarely happened before. If things continue like this, we'll end up once more reaching the conclusion that even in the worst misfortune it is possible to find enough good to be able to bear the aforesaid misfortune with patience,'(151)

'Fortunately, as human history has shown, it is not unusual for good to come of evil, less is said about the evil that can come out of good, such are the contradictions of this world of ours, some warrant more consideration than others,'(213)

'Today is today, tomorrow will bring what tomorrow brings, today is my responsibility,'(252)

'what is right and what is wrong are simply different ways of understanding our relationships with the others, not that which we have with ourselves, one should trust the latter, forgive this moralising speech, you do not know, you cannot know, what it means to have eyes in the world in which everyone else is blind, I am not a queen, no, I am simply the one who was born to see this horror, you can feel it, I both feel and see it,'(276)

'If I ever regain my sight, I shall look carefully at the eyes of others, as if I were looking into their souls, Their souls, asked the old man with the eyepatch, Or their minds, the name does not matter, it was then that, surprisingly, if we consider that we are dealing with a person without much education, the girl with the dark glasses said, Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.'(276)

'Words are like that, they deceive, they pile up, it seems they do not know where to go, and suddenly, because of two or three or four that suddenly come out, simple in themselves, a personal pronoun, an adverb, a verb, an adjective, we have the excitement of seeing them coming irresistibly to the surface through the skin and the eyes and upsetting the composure of our feelings, sometimes the nerves that cannot bear it any longer, they put up with a great deal, they put up with everything, it was as if they were wearing armours, we might say.'(281)

'What is your name, Blind people do not need a name, I am my voice, nothing else matters,'(290)

'The difficult thing is not living with other people, it's understanding them,'(301)

a Harvest Book edition
326 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
Book idea from Bethany @ Subtle Melodrama (thanks!). Her awesome review is HERE.

a Look Back!!

I just wanted to remember this too:

A look back at all the Harry Potter movies!!

I feel so happy that the final movie is coming out in a few days,

But I also feel very sad that the final movie is coming out in a few days...

176. the COUNT of MONTE CRISTO

Alexandre Dumas 1844-1846

An intricate web of melodrama awaits the reader as Edmond Dantes finally puts his cunning plan of revenge into action against Danglars, Fernand and Villefort, the three people responsible for sending him to prison for fourteen years. The year was 1815, in Marseilles, when he was falsely accused of treason and arrested on the day he was to be wed to his beloved Mercedes. Saved from eternal doom by fellow prisoner Abee Faria, who paves the way for his escape and bestows him with massive fortune, he returns around 1838 to take vengeance as the Count of Monte Cristo. Revenge is not the only thing that rules his good heart, however, as he uses his wealth to protect M. Morell (the one person who believed in his innocence and fought for his freedom) and his family.


'On the 24th of February, 1815, the watch-tower of Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the arrival of the three-master Pharaon, from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples. The usual crown of curious spectators immediately filled the quay of Fort Saint-Jean, for at Marseilles the arrival of a ship is always a great event, especially when that ship, as was the case with the Pharaon, has been built, rigged, and laden in the dockyard of old Phocacea and belongs to a shipowner of their own town.'(opening lines)

"That is just what alarms me," said Dantes. "I cannot help thinking it is not man's lot to attain happiness so easily. Good fortune is like the palaces of the enchanted isles, the gates of which were guarded by dragons. Happiness could only be obtained by overcoming these dragons, and I, I know not how I have deserved the honour of becoming Mercedes' husband."(21)

'Perhaps you have no enemies, but you may have aroused feelings of jealousy. At the early age of nineteen you are about to receive a captaincy, you are going to marry a beautiful girl who loves you; these two pieces of good fortune may have been the cause of envy.'(33)

'Danglars alone felt no pang of remorse or restlessness: he was even happy, for had he not avenged himself on an enemy and assured for himself the position on board the Pharaon he was in danger of losing? He was one of those calculating men who was born with a pen behind their ears and an ink pot in place of a heart. He went to bed at the usual hour and slept peacefully.'(47)

'In spite of his prayers, however, Dantes still remained a prisoner.
His gloom gave way to wrath. He began to roar out blasphemies which made even his gaoler recoil with horror, and dashed himself in a paroxysm of fury against the walls of the prison. Then there recurred to his mind the informer's letter which Villefort had shown him. Each line of it was reflected on the walls in fiery letters. He told himself it was the hatred of men and not the vengeance of God that had thrust him into this dark abyss. He doomed these unknown men to the most cruel torments his fiery imagination was capable of conjuring up, but, even so, the most awful of these torments seemed to him too mild and too short for them, for after the torment would come death, and in death they would find, if not repose, at all events that insensibility which so nearly resembles repose.'(58-59)

'... that I have buried in a spot he knows and has visited with me -- that is, in the caves of the small isle of Monte Cristo -- all I possess in ingots, gold, money, jewels, diamonds, gems; that alone I know the existence of this treasure, which may amount to about two million Roman crowns and which he will find on raising the twentieth rock from the small creek to the East in a straight line.'(89)

'Now farewell to kindness, humanity, gratitude," said he. "Farewell to all the sentiments which rejoice the heart. I have played the part of Providence in recompensing the good, may the god of vengeance now permit me to punish the wicked!'(154)

"It is fortunate that we still have some conscience left, otherwise we should be very unhappy." said Monte Cristo. "After any vigorous action it is conscience that saves us, for it furnishes is with a thousand and one excuses of which we alone are judges, and however excellent these reasons may be to lull as to sleep, before a tribunal they would most likely avail us little in preserving our lives."(242)

'At first sight the exterior of Monte Cristo's houae at Auteuil presented nothing magnificent, nothing of what one would have expected of a house chosen for such a grand personage as the Count of Monte Cristo. But no sooner was the door opened that the scene changed.... The library was divided into two parts and contained about two thousand books; one complete section was devoted to modern novels, and even one that had only been published the day before was to be seen in its place, proudly displaying its red and gold binding.'(274-275)

"My friends, you will no doubt admit," said he, "that, arrived at a certain degree of fortune, the superfluous takes the place of the necessary, and, as you ladies will admit, arrived at a certain degree of exaltation, the ideal takes the place of the real. Now to continue this argument, what is marvelous? That which we do not comprehend. What is truly desirable? That which we cannot have. Now to see things I cannot understand, to procure things impossible of possession, such is the plan of my life. I can realize it by two means: money and will."(279)

'It was an imposing sight to behold this old man, to all appearances a useless mass, now become the sole protector and support of two young handsome lovers just entering life. Imprinted on his face was a noble and remarkably austere expression which filled Morrel with awe. He related how he had learned to love her, and how in her unhappiness and solitude Valentine had welcomed his offer of devotion; he gave full information regarding his birth and position, and more than once when he questioned the paralytic's eye, it said to him: "that is well! Continue!"'(325)

"Behold my dear friend, how God punishes the most boastful and unfeeling for their indifference in the face of terrible disasters," he said. "I looked on unmoved and curious. I watched this grim tragedy developing, and, like one of those fallen angels, laughed at the evil committed by men under the screen of secrecy. And now my turn has come, and I am bitten by the serpent whose tortuous course I have been watching -- bitten to the core.'(425)

'Women have infallible instincts, and by means of an algebra unknown to man, they can explain the most marvelous things.'(467)

'He is a noble-hearted soul who realizes that every man owes a tribute to his country; some their talents, others their industry, others their blood.'(495)

'Live and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that, until the day comes when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these words: Wait and hope!'(508)

a Penguin book 2001 Edition
509 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 2011 Victorian Challenge
                               100+ Reading Challenge

175. 84, CHARING CROSS ROAD

Helene Hanff 1970

Such a gem!! What started as a casual correspondence to inquire about a rare book slowly became a friendship spanning twenty years. Even in pure epistolary form, we are able to grasp the heart-warming relationship that developed soon after the initial business transaction that transpired between the author (working as a writer in New York City) and the staff (notably Frank Doel) of Marks and Company, a small bookshop located at 84 Charing Cross Road in London . So endearing!

'Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase "antiquarian booksellers" scare me somewhat, as I equate "antique" with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions, or in Barnes & Noble's grimy marked-up schoolboy copies.'(1)

'Please write and tell me about London, I live for the day when I step off the boat-train and feel its dirty sidewalks under my feet. I want to walk up Berkeley Square and down Wimpole Street and stand in St. Paul's where John Donne preached and sit on the step Elizabeth sat on when she refused to enter the Tower, and like that. A newspaper man I know, who was stationed in London during the war, says tourists go to England with preconceived notions, so they always find exactly what they go looking for. I told him I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he said: "Then it's there."'(13)

'The Newman arrived almost a week ago and I'm just beginning to recover. I keep it on the table with me all day, every now and then I stop typing and reach over and touch it. Not because it's a first edition; I just never saw a book so beautiful. I feel vaguely guilty about owning it. All the gleaming leather and gold stamping and beautiful type belongs in the pine-panelled library of an English country home; it wants to be read by the fire in a gentleman's leather easy chair -- not on a secondhand studio couch in a one-room hovel in a broken-down brownstone front.'(17)

'Yorkshire pudding out of this world, we have nothing like it, I had to describe it to somebody as a high, curved, smooth, empty waffle.'(21)

'I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages some one long gone has called my attention to.'(27)

'It's the loveliest old shop straight out of Dickens, you would go absolutely out of your mind over it.
There are stalls outside and I stopped and leafed through a few things just to establish myself as a browser before wandering in. It's dim inside, you smell the shop before you see it, it's a lovely smell, I can't articulate it easily, but it combines must and dust and age, and walls of wood and floors of wood.'(28)

'you better watch out. i'm coming over there in 54 if ellery is renewed. i'm gonna climb up that victorian book-ladder and disturb the dust on the top of the shelves and everybody's decorum. Or didn't I ever tell you I write arty murders for Ellery Queen on television? All my scripts have artistic backgrounds -- ballet, concert hall, opera -- and all the suspects and corpses are cultured. maybe i'll do one about the rare book business in your honor, you want to be the murderer or the corpse?'(47)

'My friends are peculiar about books. They read all the best sellers, they get through them as fast as possible, I think they skip a lot. And they NEVER read anything a second time so they don't remember a word of it a year later. But they are profoundly shocked to see me drop a book in the wastebasket or give it away. The way they look at it, you buy a book, you read it, you put it on the shelf, you never open it again for the rest of your life but YOU DON'T THROW IT OUT! NOT IF IT HAS A HARD COVER ON IT! Why not? I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.'(54)

'There's a building going up across the street, the sign over it says:

One and Two Bedroom Apartments

At Rents That Make Sense

Rents do NOT make sense. And prices do not sit around being reasonable about anything, no matter what it says in the ad -- which isn't an ad any more it's A Commercial.... i go through life watching the english language being raped before me face. like miniver cheevy, i was born too late.... and like miniver cheevy i cough and call it fate and go on drinking.'(69)

'I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he nodded and said "It's there."... Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. Looking around the rug one thing's for sure: it's here.'(94)

'If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.'(94)

a Penguin books edition

97 pages

Book borrowed from the library

Book qualifies for : 100+ Reading Challenge

174. FIGHT CLUB

Chuck Palahniuk 1996

Yes, this novel is different. Yes, it is a read out of my comfort zone. And yes, it is crude, raw and at times bizarre. After all, it is about an unnamed narrator in search of a meaningful life, whose idea of managing his chronic insomnia is joining support groups for terminal illnesses he does not have. There he meets and falls for Marla, a fellow faker. His best friend is Tyler Durden, inventor of Fight Club (a group of men who beat each other up for fun in the basement of bars) and Project Mayhem (a group of men who commit crimes intentionally to cause havoc). And yet, buried within this chaos is a significant life lesson, the unraveling of which I found to be so original, entertaining, and surprisingly moving. So yes, I like this book very much!

'Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends. People are always asking, did I know about Tyler Durden.'(opening lines)

'"You cry," Bob says and inhales and sob, sob, sobs. " Go on now and cry."
The big wet face settles down on top of my head, and I am lost inside. This is when I'd cry. Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.'(17)

'Walking home after a support group, I felt more alive than I'd ever felt. I wasn't host to cancer or blood parasites; I was the little warm center that the life of the world crowded around.'(22)

'"No" Marla says. No, she wants it all. The cancers, the parasites. Marla's eyes narrow. She never dreamed she could feel so 'smarvelous. She actually felt alive. Her skin was clearing up. All her life, she never saw a dead person. There was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with. Oh, but now there was dying and death and loss and grief. Weeping and shuddering, terror and remorse. Now that she knows where we're all going, Marla feels every moment of her life.'(38)

'The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.'(48)

"The second rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.'(48)

'You don't say anything because fight club exists only in the hours between when fight club starts and when fight club ends.'(48)

'That's the third rule in fight club, when someone say stop, or goes limp, even if he's just faking it, the fight is over... Only two guys to a fight. One fight at a time. They fight without shirts or shoes. The fights go on as long as they have to. Those are the other rules of fight club.'(49)

'After a night in fight club, everything in the real world gets the volume turned down. Nothing can piss you off. Your word is law, and if other people break that law or question you, even that doesn't piss you off.'(49)

'At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.'(52)

'This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention.
If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. Everything else about their checkbook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window.
You had their full attention.
People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.
And when they spoke, they weren't telling you a story. When the two of you talked, you were building something, and afterward you were both different than before.'(107)

'You don't ask questions is the first rule in Project Mayhem... the second rule of Project Mayhem is you don't ask questions... The third rule is no excuses.... The fourth rule is no lies.'(122)

'It's Project Mayhem that's going to save the world. A cultural ice age. A prematurely induced dark age. Project Mayhem will force humanity to go dormant or into remission long enough for the Earth to recover.... Like fight club does with clerks and box boys, Project Mayhem will break up civilization so we can make something better out of the world.'(125)

'You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something. Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don't need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need.
We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.'(149)

1st Owl Book Edition
208 pages
Book owned
Book idea from JRMD, thanks!
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

173. WASHINGTON SQUARE

Henry James 1880

Set during the Victorian period in Washington Square, New York, this short classic depicts an era gone by (thank goodness) of women subservience. Catherine is the devoted only child of a wealthy and successful widower, Dr. Sloper. They live with Dr. Sloper's sister Mrs. Penniman. When she meets and falls in love with Morris Townsend, a carefree and handsome fellow, she finds herself manipulated by two conflicting views toward Morris: her father who dislikes him and suspects that he is only after her inheritance, and her Aunt who simply adores him. The battle of wills between all of these four main characters renders the read a bit of a gentle suspense.

'During a portion of the first half of the present century, and more particularly during the latter part of it, there flourished and practised in the city of New York a physician who enjoyed perhaps an exceptional share of the consideration which, in the United States, has always been bestowed upon distinguished members of the medical profession.'(opening lines)

'It is well known that in New York it is possible for a young girl to occupy a primary one. Catherine, who was extremely modest, had no desire to shine, and on most social occasions, as they are called, you would have found her lurking in the background. She was extremely fond of her father, and very much afraid of him; she thought him the cleverest and handsomest and most celebrated of men. The poor girl found her account so completely in the exercise of her affections that the little tremor of fear that mixed itself with her filial passion gave the thing an extra relish rather than blunted its edge.'(9)

'In front of them was the Square, containing a considerable quantity of inexpensive vegetation, enclosed by a wooden paling, which increased its rural and accessible appearance; and round the corner was the more august precinct of Fifth Avenue, taking its origin at this point with a spacious and confident air which already marked it for high destinies. I know not whether it is owing to the tenderness of early associations, but this portion of New York appears to many persons the most delectable. It has a kind of established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in other quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a riper, richer, more honourable look than any of the upper ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare -- the look of having had something of a social history.'(13)

'He learned what he had asked some three or four days later, after Morris Townsend, with his cousin, had called in Washington Square. Mrs. Penniman did not tell her brother, on the drive home, that she had intimated to this agreeable young man, whose name she did not know, that, with her niece, she should be very glad to see him; but she was greatly pleased, and even a little flattered, when, late on a Sunday afternoon, the two gentleman made their appearance.'(21)

'The reason Catherine has received so little attention is that she seemed to all the young men to be older then themselves. She is so large, and she dresses -- so richly. They are rather afraid of her, I think; she looks as if she had been married already, and you know they don't like married women. 'And if our young men appear disinterested,' the Doctor's wiser sister went on, 'it is because they marry, as a general thing, so young, before twenty-five, at the age of innocence and sincerity, before the age of calculation. If they only waited a little, Catherine would fare better.'(30-31)

'You women are all the same! But the type to which your brother belongs was made to be the ruin of you, and you were made to be its handmaids and victims. The sign of the type in question is the determination -- sometimes terrible in its quiet intensity -- to accept nothing of life but its pleasures, and to secure these pleasures chiefly by the aid of your complaisant sex. Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These other in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women. What our young friends chiefly insist upon is that someone else shall suffer for them; and women to that sort of thing, as you  must know, wonderfully well.'(65)

'She will cling," said Mrs. Almond, 'she will certainly cling.'
'Yes; as I say, she will stick.'
'Cling is prettier. That's what those very simple natures always do, and nothing could be simpler than Catherine. She doesn't take many impressions; but when she takes one she keeps it. She is like a copper kettle that received a dent, you may polish up the kettle, but you can't efface the mark.'(95)

'"She would touch me if she didn't irritate me. That's the effect she has upon me now. I have tried everything upon her; I really have been quite merciless. But it is of no use whatever; she is absolutely glued. I have passed, in consequence, into the exasperated stage. At first I had a good deal of a certain genial curiosity about it; I wanted to see if she really would stick. But, good Lord, one's curiosity is satisfied! I see she is capable of it, and now she can let go."
"She will never let go," said Mrs. Almond.'(122)

a Wordsworth Edition Limited 1995
162 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for : 100+ Reading Challenge
                              The Victorian Challenge 2011

Happy July 4th to everyone!!!