Jane Eyre - By Charlotte Brontë

So it goes my modest opinion: I lo-ve it! Jane Eyre is absolutely adorable and not for her being simple and humbled, but for her having those characteristics and never loosing her truth self. No matter the importance of the situation, Jane never said or did anything just for the sake of pleasing those around her. Not even for Mr. Rochester who she regarded as her Master. She was resolute in her stubbornness, if you will.
Jane was plane, but bold. She was sweet, but imminent.
Before reading Jane Eyre I've had read some critics about how unrealistic this book seemed to some. And yes, I tent to agree that it wasn't everyday that we heard of very rich Masters marrying governesses or anyone not well born or poor for that matter. But to my view, unrealistic or impossible wouldn't be how I'll describe it. "Unlikely" is the better fit for the description of Mr. Rochester falling so much in love with our plain Jane. But for us, as such complex beings, who to say it would never happen?
What I found sincerely unrealistic further in the novel, was in fact Jane discovering to be the heir of such fortune - the discover been made by the very person who she had been living with. And even there, Brontë had such hold of the reader for the way she'd beautifully written it, that I'm most sure we can manage to believe such situation possible.
But enough of the bad stuff. Our plain Jane was a wonderful young woman who overcome a terrible childhood. First at the hands of her dreadful aunt Mrs. Reed, and then by the Lowood Institution, were she felt cold, hunger, cruelty from all around her apart from Miss Temple, the single kindhearted teacher, who Jane adored.
But believing better times ahead, she then becomes the governess at Thorfield.
And dear reader, the beautiful, delicate and intelligent manner that Mr. Rochester romances Jane, it's just lovely. It made me devourer the book in search of what would come next.
But what to say of the suspense? I was in absolute terror for our heroine, on every single episode of Mrs. Rochester appearances and dangerous mischiefs around the house. Never mind the fire started by her on Eduard's room, but what to say when she wanders around Jane's room the night before her wedding, to tear apart her veil and gets so uncomfortably close to Jane's eyes with her bloated purple face and then, blows off her candle, making Jane pass out of terror! Ow My, terrifying indeed!
Jane Eyre has romance, suspense, misery and pain among few other emotions very well portrayed by Brontë. And the end of this book touches me deeply for how sad but honest, obvious but sensible Jane finds her way back into Mr. Rochester's arms.
As for they rekindled romance and later wedding, it was plain and earthy, just as our dear Jane always were. Plain extraordinary Jane.

Look At Me - By Anita Brookner

"Once a thing is known, it can't never be unknown, it can only be forgotten"...the opening for this book made me reflect for a long time. It's somewhat cliché but it speaks the truth. My mother used to say to always be very careful with what we say and how we say it. For once is out of our mouths it can't never go back. And our mind is a powerful thing. We can replay whatever we want, however we want, over and over again, for as long as we want. So, we should indeed be careful when to express ourselves to others, as we can't never really go back.
People can forgive us, but never forget. That's the power we give them once we manifest ourselves, really.
Look At Me is really about loneliness, in the deepest aspect of it.
As being someone who lived by myself, having no family around, I can - and always will - relate to this book. Fanny has a never ending everyday of the same work on a medical research institute. A place where she's with no doubt the youngest one and where the highlight of the day is Mrs Halloran getting cosy with Dr Simek.
Fanny has no living family and no social life whatsoever. She has Olivia, who very much like her, is introverted and quiet and timid.
It really gets to my core when Fanny tells her panic of getting home - a empty one - for a lame dinner by her self, and to avoid that she watches windows on the commercial areas to have time to pass by.
For the ones who lived it, loneliness is a monster that eats you up bit by bit, and it's a scary business to remember being there and not wanting to go home.
To go anywhere. Inside malls, theatres, anywhere where there's people and other lives to be able to observe and imagine what do they have when they get home to families and friends.
Then there are friends like Alix and Nick. Extravagant people who takes Fanny under they wings as an curious project for entertainment. She's shy and quiet and for a while she's interesting to be around. As as soon as something more exciting pops out, Fanny is kicked out of the group like she'd never existed. And for Fanny, those friends's life style where the kind of life she always dreamed.
But once she's in the outs of they circle, Fanny modestly recollects her little pieces and timidly leaves the scene, back to her empty apartment, back to her empty life.
Although I sincerely would like a happier ending for our Fanny Hinton, I accept this one as something very realistic and relatable. About loneliness at its finest. About people who has no one, and decently try to hide the everyday emptiness, the sadness of every evening, and portraits the facade as normal as possible life, to the outside world.

Madame Bovary - By Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary. The famous one.
I believe the first and strongest word that comes to mind is BOREDOM.
To my point of view our poor Madame Bovary was bored, just unbelievably and heavily bored. It is common knowledge that the 1800 woman were submitted to a very limited position in life. No middle terms - or you were a maid with no prospects, or you were a well-breed "lady". It all depended on birth/husbands status.
But I very much so agree with Mrs Bovary Senior when she says that all Emma needed was some good old fashioned hard work!
Emma pretty soon discovered that her husband although a very respectful and decent man, was as dull as it gets. Definitely not the Paris-Ball-Dancing partner she so helplessly dreamed about from her novels, on her days at the convent.
To me as I see it, Emma just got herself with a little too much of nothingness in her hands. She had a life time of the same everyday and no passion for her husband. She was beautiful, well educated and alive. So the conclusion? Sure she would go ahead and have a extra marital affair with basically the very first man she came across, and then the second (ow please, really, don't tell me that that was anything extraordinary about Rodolph or Leon. She wouldn't had looked at them twice had she had a happy fulfilled life. And that's the truth!) But sure in that situation she would find each one of them to be her true and only real love, right?...is that so?
I would like to reflect on the fact that around the 1800's everything and everybody were just about as drool and dull as her dear Charles. And not all doctor's wives went ahead to disgraced them and their husband's life out of boredom. Please, far from me to be judgmental, which I very much try not to. I'm just trying to really understand Madame Bovary as she was - a villain? naughty vile woman with no sense of empathy but her own? - arrogant we know as much, but was she bred to pure badness???.
What about our poor Charles? someone who fought so hard to overcome poorness through studies, becoming such respectful doctor and for what? - end up so sadly disgraced and dead on his own door steps! not to mention little Berthe. God knows that child was absolutely innocent in all this mess, and became an orphan working at factories. Tsc, tsc Madame Bovary, tsc, tsc...
I guess in the end we have agree to our responsibilities in life and try to carry on with the courage of facing our demons. That my friend, is life. To have the strength to go on when life closes its doors - by our on faults and failures. And that does not involves eating arsenic when the bills piles on, certainly does not involves not thinking of your child, husband or anybody else for that matter, but exclusively on yourself, exactly as Emma done, up to the very end.
In resume I found Madame Bovary a bored, selfish, eccentric young wife.

Water For Elephants - By Sara Gruen

I decided to read Water For Elephants to find out all the buzz about it. Had a vague idea about the plot, but not much.
I found it a good book, but not for the obvious reasons. I have to say I did NOT fell in love with Marlena, or the young Jacob for that matter. The characters are cute, the story very well told, but nothing that really made me crazy about them.
Let's go to the usual suspects: The richness of circus history. Yes, it is great. You can actually feel the circus of that era. Every detail, every scenario, discrimination of social class, behavioral in general, seems pretty much real and believable. You have to wonder just how hard were those times, the 1930's. It feels like it were a jungle were only the strongest could win - Strength meaning money, of course, almost at all times.
And what about Uncle Al? doesn't he sound like a very real ringmaster to you or what? for all his greediness and the "no-matter-what-the-show-must-go-on" attitude 24 hours a day. Fabulous, really.
And let me make a note about August, Marlena's husband might have been a vicious brutal man (making it very difficult to read at times about his cruelty to our adorable Elephant Rosie, specially for me who's a total animal lover) but at least the man was a Paranoid schizophrenic or "paragon schnitzophonic" as Uncle Al had called it (have to say, I cracked in laughs with that one!). The man was sick, part of his brain didn't work, for God sake!
I'm not saying that it justifies the horrible things he'd done, but I have to point that the man was damaged. It does makes a difference to be just a born prick, a cruel s.o.b. by nature.
Well, at least that's how I see it.
But in the end, what genuinely made my heart ache is the old Jacob Jankowski. I found it so heart breaking his portrait of old age. How he tells of one fine day being a busy father of five kids, having a wife and a good job, then, all of suddenly (because that's really how he feels that time passed by) realize he's ninety (or ninety three, he's never sure) and had been left behind on a nursing home.
The way he talks about loneliness, of people always telling him what to do, or what to eat, when to sleep.
Of his lost dignity for not felling he has a voice anymore, of being just a old man treated like a child on a corner of a nursing home.
What touched me the most, was his account of how the body "cheats" the mind. How come his hands are so wrinkly and old? who's that old grumpy little man on the mirror? where did the real me go?...
I thought it was very interesting to think about that. It is a road we all are going to take, there's no escaping from that.
I just pray when my golden years gets me, that I will have at least somebody to visit me on Sundays and talk to me about the weather. Just pray not to be forgotten somewhere with all my memories of a good life in a old frail body.

Sarah's Key - By Tatiana de Rosnay

This book is a very touching one. For someone whom read so much and wondered on the sciences of the terrible WWII, Sarah's Key makes impossible for you not to be horrified with the realities of War. This book, is about the Velodrome d'Hiver roundup in France, July 16, 1942, where in the middle of the night more than thirteen thousand Jewish victims were arrested and held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver and the Drancy internment camp nearby, then shipped by rail to Auschwitz. From these Thirteen thousand, over four thousand were children, between the ages of two (two!) and eleven.
What's outstanding about Sara's character, is the after-war persona. It goes to show us, how in some cases, when we go through such horrible things, surviving sometimes is really not enough. How much can we endure? - and more importantly, how normal can we lead a life after such pain?
Sarah is a Jewish eleven year old girl. She and her family are taken by the police in the middle of the night, in very cruel fashion.
For protection, she'd hidden her little brother under a cupboard locked with a key, obviously believing this is the best way to keep him safe. Her innocence is such, that she's convinced she'll be back very soon, maybe even in hours! to get him back...
We can see surviving with very different angles. It's complex. And for some people unfortunately it isn't sufficient. What sort of Sara would you be?
Going through the impossible and enduring inhuman surroundings of concentration camp, holding dear to that big key close to her heart, day after day, thinking fervently on her little brother...how long has it been? weeks? months? he must be very thirsty by now... can he still be alive?
Then after a very, if you may, "lucky" chance to scape, running back at her old apartment, now having total strangers living in, on her house! with all vestiges of her prior life gone forever, And then the already expected but still unthinkable...to open the cupboard to the already very decomposed body of your little brother.
What to say about guilt? what to say of carrying on?
On Sara's case, she gives up. Later in life, she runs into a tree with her car and ends it, she can't stand life, she lacks the strength.
Who's to say how life would go on after something like that? I honestly can't tell that you I wouldn't follow Sara's path. I would like to say I'll have done things differently, be a strong survivor, take life with both hands and be ready for anything that might come my way after what I've been trough, but really, I couldn't say it for sure.
I like to think that we had more people like Genevieve and Jules Dufaure out there at that difficult time. People who would just for the sake of kindness, helped to save lives, even if endangering they own. Kindhearted folks who rescued others by giving shelter, food and compassion to those poor souls.