WELCOME  TO

THE BOOKJEANIIE

After a week's break due to lack of internet service during my move, I am back with more book news and reviews. Take time on this beautiful Easter spring day to enjoy a good book or perhaps this lovely poem by Billy Collins, former 
U.S. Poet Laureate. 


Today

BY BILLY COLLINS
If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.





  In an act of desperation after losing her job in a local cafe, Lou agrees to interview to be a "care assistant" for Will Traynor, a  thirty-five year old genius of the business world and daredevil adventurer, who is now a quadripligic confined to a wheelchair.  Will is angry and bitter, willing to make life miserable for whomever attempts to get close to him.  Lou could care less about the job that she is offered - it is the money that she needs to help her out-of-work father and single-parent sister.  During the first days they spend together, Will refuses to communicate and Lou just tries to busy herself with tidying the already immaculate cottage, surreptiously checking on Will every 15 minutes as instructed.  Eventually Will's caustic sarcasm softens and his dry humor begins to reveal the person that has been long buried within his damaged body.  As Lou tries to convince Will to stop hiding from the world and take part in life again, he so aptly points out to her that she has hardly taken advantage of what the world has to offer, settling for a lowly job in a town that she has never left.  As they each try to convince the other to take risks and make changes, they grow closer and find that caring too much can also be a dangerous risk.  Moyes has created a fresh authentic voice in her narrator Lou, a working-class girl in the countryside outside of London, presenting the reader with clearly drawn perspectives on the value of life and the painfully difficult choices that are made to protect the ones that we love.



You may recall that I mentioned Elizabeth and Hazel by David Margolick a couple of months ago when it was chosen as a selection for discussion by my book group.  In 1957, when Elizabeth and Hazel were only 14 years old , a  young reporter from the Arkansas, Will Counts, captured their image in one of the most iconic photographs of the Civil Rights era.  As quiet studious Elizabeth Eckford attempted to become the first black student to enroll at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, she became the focus of intense racial hatred by the jeering crowd that included Hazel Bryan, a girl who had joined in the heckling with her friends mainly for the excitement.  Hazel wandered off that day, unaware that her face would soon become the symbol of Southern bigotry and prejudice.  She soon dropped out of Central while Elizabeth would go on to endure years of verbal and physical abuse as she remained determined to get the best education available in that city.  Her goal was to become a lawyer and fight for civil rights and equality but her experience at Central began to erode her self-confidence and eventually her plans for the future crumbled as she began to experience depression and what was later diagnosed as PTSD.  Hazel meanwhile married young and became a mother, realizing in her early twenties the shameful role that she played in tormenting another human being.  Margolick carefully deconstructs that day in September, 1957, relating the experiences and reactions of a wide range of persons present, from school officials to national reporters to the girls themselves.  We learn not only about the these two young girls but also about the political figures and community leaders who determined how the decision of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education played out in Arkansas and other places in the South.  Although Elizabeth and Hazel eventually met and even developed an uneasy friendship, the burden of the past eventually broke the fragile bond.  Margolick meticulously presents a complex picture of racial intolerance, hatred,  and distrust but also of remorse, forgiveness, and healing.  But he offers no resolution, that is for history to decide.


TRY TO CREATE YOUR OWN 

BOOK SPINE POEM





Have a wonderful week. . .

and keep reading!


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