Some books are moving, some books are funny, some make your stomach turn. Today I bring to you a book that will do all that and more – Lucia Etxebarria’s Un Milagro En Equilibrio (A Miracle in Equilibrium).
First of all – a disclaimer – I am not a mother, only a daughter, so if any of you mothers out there disagree with me on anything – that’s OK. The book’s narrative is quite simple – Eva, a successful yet self-doubting writer, gives birth to a baby girl. She then sits down to write a memoir in which she describes her life before motherhood to her daughter, so as to someday let her know who her mother is, without embellishing the gory stuff.
This is a book that is so real and speaks so much to women of my generation, it sometimes hurts. The brutally frank discussion of the fight to become independent, of the difficulty of leaving your past (and childhood) behind, the ways in which we think of ourselves as feminist, liberated women but sometimes behave like we know nothing about it, and many many more issues are at the heart of what every young career woman out in the dating pool is going through.
The book also offers a poignant look into one of the most complex relationships in nature – the relationship between a mother and her daughter. As one of two sisters growing up with a single mother, this is one subject I can never get enough of, and Etxbarria jumps into it feet first.
All in all, a very refreshing and recommended book, sparing you nothing but still keeping it readable and not too scary. Have fun!
I am leaving you with a song about one of the most (if not the most) iconic mothers – The Beatles’ ” Lady Madonna”:
After revealing my deep love for John Irving’s books, I now turn to a different angle of his work.
The relationship between an author and his fans is acomplex one. Often you stumble upon a book that knocks you down, sending you an a mission of finding everything written by this author. I am known to have these bouts that I prefer to call “Festivals”, during which I read three, four or five books by the same author in a row.
But when dealing with an author working for a long time and only gaining fame after publishing three or four books, as in Irving’s case, the story may differ. Because I do not live in an English speaking country, books in English are readily available but in a rather sporadic fashion. That is to say, an author’s entire bibliography may not be available, especially the books that were not great hits. There are ways to address this issue (which may be discussed in a separate post), but what is means in the context of this post is that I was exposed to Irving’s work gradually, and read his books not according to the order in which they were published but when I happened to find them.
When I got home, the fabulous Until I Find You hit the stores in Israel, and so it happened that I first read it and then read A Prayer for Owen Meany I brought home with me. I was astonished by the similarities between these two books that have completely different plot lines but speak of the same issues, written more than 15 years apart. They both speak about a child who has a complex relationship with a loved but somehow absent mother, of religion in the broader sense, of the power of music and classical music in particular, of the semi-incestuous love for a sister/friend, and of the search for a father.
It is amazing and thrilling to see the development of these issues in the course of time in the author’s mind. To my taste, the later book is much more compelling, dealing with the issues in a more mature and profound way, but they are both fantastic books.
It is a great joy that a coincidence made me read them together for the first time and observe this evolution of ideas.
I would love to have your input on this and other connections you may have noticed.
Instead of writing what this blog is all about, I decided to just dive in.
As stated in the headline, John Irving is my favorite author. To me, all his books share an emotional note of longing that grabs the heart and rings true for any human being in any culture.
I found this analysis of recurring themes in his work on Wikipedia, and though it is interesting, I am not quite convinced this is the way to go about his work. Yes, sex and sexuality are very much present in his work, as is wrestling, but to me his work revolves more about exploring the many ways and faces of love and loss.
Yes, many of his works concentrate on New England, which is probably his safe zone, but as his career progressed he ventured into farther, more exotic places, still retaining his specific voice and sensitivities. Two glorious examples are the warmly recommended A Son of the Circus and Until I Find You, and another is the less-brilliant but still worthy The Fourth Hand.
In all his books the issue of the many faces and facets of love – love between friends, between lovers, between children and their parents – is explored to show them in their tenderness, cruelty, difficulties and triumphs. But this discussion is always authentic, never seems far-fetched, even in the most eccentric situations Irving puts his characters in, and for me is the common thread that always brings me back to him – in his books I will always get an interesting, moving and fantastic story.
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