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Apple Blossom Time
photo by Amy Brandon |
“Outside
was quiet. Light clear as water created
shadows of leaves curled and minuscule on the ground. She looked at the sky as she walked, a
passionate blue. Cloudless. In the grove by the far apple orchard the
apple trees were in shadow. The sun
postured along the curvature of canyon and illuminated the walnut trees
starkly…. The sun on the porous bank
near where she stood was lit up, incandescent, the minerals glittering and the
dull mud peculiar and particular even in its dullness. Each pore and streak and detail was washed
and brought forth as is a person’s face by the light.” From The Orchardist
The last two books I have read I loved until half-way
through. I still liked them both at the
end, but lost some of my feeling for each of them for different reasons. The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
succeeded in evoking its time and place and in investing me in the characters
and their lives. The main complaint I
have about the novel is that half-way through, the plot starts to drag out a
bit. I felt like the story could have
been told a little more succinctly. I
also ended up fairly disliking the character of Della. I wanted to like her, and naturally, I pity
anyone who grows up like she did. I just
lost patience with her. To be fair,
however, I will have to say that I have no basis for understanding her kind of
misery. The older I get, the more I see,
every day, evidence of how truly messed up a person’s upbringing can make him
or her. I’d say the contrast between
Della and Angelene exhibits this point perfectly. Regardless of the dragging middle part and
the irritation I felt with Della, The Orchardist is definitely a book
worth reading. The descriptions of the
land and the people and of how they are tied to the land, the family saga and
the harshness of people’s lives, and the feeling of place and time in the novel
reminded me of Steinbeck’s East of Eden, which is one of my favorite
novels.
After
The Orchardist, I read The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. The first chapter of this book is almost
perfect, and I loved the brilliant, quirky, highly improbable dialogue, which
was very entertaining and laugh out loud funny sometimes. There are so many themes presented worth
exploring and considering: existential
angst, living your best life anyway, how small people and small infinites
matter too. The last part of the book,
however, was so difficult for me to read that I don’t feel like I can say I
loved the whole book. It needs to be
read, deserves to be read, but was not an easy thing for me to get
through. And that’s all I have to say
about that.
