Books 58-59

Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier (Audio)
Read (well) by Anne Twomey
Genre: Historical Fiction

Set in the early 1900s, two girls meet by chance as their families are visiting a cemetery. They become lifelong friends their families are reluctantly connected through their friendship.

The political and moral climate of the day feature heavily in the story.

The mother of one of the girls becomes a “suffragette” and is jailed for her demonstrations promoting women’s suffrage. Her antics are an embarrassment to the family, but she is passionate about the cause and throws herself wholly into it. Her pre-teen daughter is left to deal with life without a mother, and at the same time she realizes that her mother has never been much of a mother to her at all.

Many of Chevalier’s novels have such an abundance of characters that I have to actually write down the names of the characters to remember who is who. This was not the case with this novel. It was easy to follow, even if the subject matter was heavy at times.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

This was a tedious read for me. It gets a little repetitive (and who can blame her...I mean she was stuck indoors with very little contact to the outside world) and I had to force myself to continue reading it at times.

It is, of course, a very sad story...not so much the diary as the epilogue where we learn that Anne died in a concentration camp just two months before the liberation. Such a tragedy.

If you are interested in books about the Holocaust, I recommend Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place. I found it much more interesting and inspirational.