The Skinny: April Reads
I look away for one second and it's the middle of April already! This month has been jam-packed with activities, which probably explains why I saved reading the last 100 pages of our book club read for the night before our meeting. Conveniently enough, I was also the one hosting our meeting this month. You can imagine that this led to me running around like a chicken with its head cut off in the 24 hours prior to the event. Nonetheless, I managed to finish the novel!
I don't know about you, but I love it when the ladies in my book club and I disagree on our feelings about a novel. I think it's such a wonderful example of how every person's unique background and experiences can color their reading of the book. It's really refreshing to discuss our varying interpretations and respectfully disagree on certain plot maneuvers and the author's intentions when writing particular scenes. Would I recommend The Marriage of Opposites to a friend? Honestly, probably not. Would I say that it taught me something while I was reading it? Definitely! Without further ado - here's the review!
The Marriage of Opposites
Alice Hoffman, 384 pages
At its core, The Marriage of Opposites is a story about love. Set in idyllic Charlotte Amalie (the capital of the Virgin Islands) on sultry St. Thomas, the story alternates perspectives, beginning with a young girl named Rachel (the story's eventual protagonist). Rachel is raised under the watchful eye of her mother, taught accounting and finance by her father, and kept company by the housemaid's daughter, Jestine. She eventually marries a man twenty years her senior to save her family's business. With this marriage, she inherits a household, four children, and a new housemaid named Rosalie. In a series of devastating events, Rachel loses her father, her husband, and her mother. Jestine loses her daughter, Lydie, to Aaron (Rachel's cousin and her late mother's adored surrogate child) and his new wife. Ultimately, this story of love is draped in stories of loss. I don't think that love stories can really be told any other way.
Rachel's affairs are set to be straightened out by her nephew by marriage. When she meets Frederic, they fall madly in love. They are shunned by the Jewish community on the island and essentially disavowed, unable to even attend services at the new synagogue. In the tumultuous years to follow, she and Frederic care for their 12 children (4 from her late husband's first wife, 4 from her late husband, and 4 of their own) as best they can without letting the kids know about the social leprosy they suffer in their own community. It becomes clear that Rachel's favorite child, Jacobo, is also destined to be her most challenging. Her biggest fear is that he is too much like her. Jacobo dreams of being an artist in Paris and, much to Rachel's chagrin, does end up leaving to Venezuela for a time to paint. Jacobo returns home and insists now on being called Camille. He returns only to say a prayer at his sister's deathbed. This is, of course, a turning point in the story when we realize that Jacobo is actually Camille Pissarro, an impressionist painter from the 1860s.
Hoffman tackles a lot in this book, and she does so graciously. Her prose is a delight to read - light on the ears like silk running through your fingertips. Her words take on a lyrical property as she weaves them together to tell this complicated tale. At the end of the day, every other woman in my book club absolutely loved the novel. I disagree for only a few reasons, chief among them the fact that the story took on so many plot lines that I felt it did a mediocre job (with each of the many) rather than doing a phenomenal job (with just a few). The most genuine and heartbreaking moments in this book, I believe, were those exploring the interaction between Rachel's family and those in positions of servitude (Adele, Jestine, Rosalie, etc.). The latter suffered just as the story's protagonist did, but in humbling silence. They were the ones who kept households running while the former acted (oftentimes) out of haste and passion. I tend to gravitate towards those characters because they, to me, symbolize true sacrifice, compassion, and forgiveness.
Here are two of Pissarro's St. Thomas paintings from the mid-1860s. Despite having grown up there, the world-renowned painter doesn't have many works of his homeland. One member of our book club suggested that his earliest works (likely of St. Thomas landscapes) were likely lost in the shuffle when he moved from the Virgin Islands to France.
Enough of my babbling! If you're into magical realism and historical fiction, check out The Marriage of Opposites! I'm off to start When Breath Becomes Air. A friend sent the book to me a few months ago and I'm finally getting around to reading it. Next month's book club read will be The Architect's Apprentice - I doubt that I'll be able to make the meeting, but am excited to read the book nonetheless!
What to expect in next week's blog post: lots of photos from my parents' wedding reception this weekend! We'll be celebrating at Trummer's on Main in Clifton, VA! My parents chose a great food and drink spread, so I hope our guests enjoy :)
