Household, and Jacob Have I Loved

[radiantfracture]

Thank you for the reading-while-busy book suggestions. A steady pile of library books is accumulating on the living-room table. This phase of book-borrowing always feels so purposeful, unlike the lamentable scramble to get them all back in.

I have begun trying to sort out the Beautiful Shed for the winter -- I reorganized the back hall and office area (which is just the triangular space under the staircase, but it serves) and set up a shelf for the books I teach from / with / about (I ought to have one on prepositions) -- some on Fantastic Beasts, a few on composition, but most for Indigenous Literatures and Oratures.

There's much more to do, but the open surface of the desk feels expansive, and the shelf of books purposeful.

I moved all my children's / YA books back upstairs into the loft; that leaves about fifty books on the stairs still uncatalogued -- mostly short stories, which need to be incorporated into the fiction section. They had their own section for a while, but this became impracticable.

As I was moving the YA books, I discovered a forgotten copy of Jacob Have I Loved, so naturally I immediately sat down and started to read it.

For me and for my friend J., Jacob was a touchstone in the struggle towards maturity (ETA: which is to say, well into our late 20s). For a long time when I was young, I only thought about how unfair Louise's life was. I identified with the early part of her narrative perspective, and felt like she was cheated.

Now the book feels like such a generous offering, this story about how if you don't get what you want, if you don't feel like the one chosen for love and attention, you can still make a beautiful and purposeful life -- often a better one than your first limited expectations would have allowed for.

I feel that, certainly.

I think partly this was lost on me when I was younger because the grown-up bit of Louise's life is telescoped into the last chapter of the book (which makes sense for a YA novel, but doesn't allow time for my young self, a thinker in absolutes, to contemplate why this, too, might be a good life.)

But what I really came here to point out was this:

"What time's the ferry due?"
"The same time as always, Grandma." I wished only to be left to my book, which was a deliciously scary one about some children who had been captured by a bunch of pirates in the West Indies. It was my mother's. All of the books were hers except the extra Bibles. (41)

Surely Louise is reading A High Wind in Jamaica.

{rf}

Comments

[hlagol]

I love so much the nostalgia and text filled genre of organization and cleaning. Nothing better than to take a break mid-task to delve into a much-loved thing.

[radiantfracture]

You're so right. It's like rummaging around in your mindspace made manifest.

[malada]

You have a flat surface with nothing on it?

*looks at her cluttered desks and sighs*

-m

[bibliofile]

I'm not sure that that's allowed, much less possible. [gestures dramatically]

[heliopausa]

Yes, for sure, re A High Wind in Jamaica. It casts a light on Louise's mother, too, that she's a reader of tough books in a pretty confined environment.

[radiantfracture]

Yes! And that she probably has a sense of irony and of the grotesque.

[mrissa]

Oh my GOD of COURSE she is.

I had not read A High Wind in Jamaica at the time I last read Jacob Have I Loved. But YES.

[radiantfracture]

I love those moments when the outlines of literature get coloured in a little bit.

[notasupervillain]

I hated that book because I felt it was unfair. I still don't think I've got the maturity to see it any other way.