Eleanor is one of the best characters I have ever met.
Eleanor is one of the best characters I have ever met.
Unlike in the US and the UK, where already stressed out and underpaid women were being told to ‘lean in‘ and do more, it looked like you could pretty much lean any way you fancied in Denmark and still do OK. Oh, and women weren‘t handed sticks to beat themselves with if they weren‘t ‘having it all‘. This, I decided, was refreshing.
You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.
It seems to me now that we were three girls together with so much to hope for. And that it is a hard world that has brought the three of us to this. When men have authority over women. Women can be brought very low.
And they will be brought very low. We spend our time admiring and envying each other, when we should have been guiding and protecting each other.
Top 3 quotes: "I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction" • "We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat." • "A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it."
It starts in a dreary, rainy Ireland in the latter half of the 19th Century. I was completely absorbed into the mystery of what was going on in this quiet, rural Irish village. The plot moves slowly but if you let yourself be drawn in by the mysticism and landscape of this tale you will not be disappointed.
This one took me awhile to get through. I loved and hated the characters throughout. Long, but families are complicated. Not gonna lie, I teared up at the end...the end is worth it.
The truth is neither good nor bad. It is above evil. Above morality. It doesn‘t offer anything besides itself.
"Survival is insufficient."