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"Nothing links man to man like the frequent passage from hand to hand of a good book."
My Dream of You
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My Dream of You
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3 journalers for this copy...
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Book description:My Dream of You is the story of Kathleen de Burca, an Irish woman based in London, a travel writer who crisscrosses the globe. She is a woman on the run until a quick series of blows, on the eve of a milestone birthday, stops her cold-revealing the painful cost of her refugee existence and the encroaching despair that the love she believed would deliver her might never come. And still, she feels, her heart is ridiculously alive. . . . And so it is to passion that Kathleen turns when she sets out for Ireland to investigate the true story of a scandalous affair between the wife of an English landlord and an Irish servant during the latter years of the Famine. Between the lines of the historical record and through a reconsideration of the family she fled so long ago, Kathleen attempts to understand how it is that even in the face of adversity love can prevail and even with love families can be torn apart. During her time in the country, she encounters a lover of her own who helps her to know her own heart and presents her with an ultimate choice that, like the one made by her nineteenth-century lovers, promises to alter the course of her life. I picked this book up because I thought it would make a good offering for an Irish-themed swap we were planning for St. Patrick's Day and I am so glad that I did. This is a really wonderful novel, full of humanity. An amazing feat for a first novel. Kathleen's character is so real and even though she is very different from me, I couldn't help but understand her and get caught up in her triumphs and failures. The novel is primarily about Kathleen and her personal development as she struggles through a time of mid-life crisis, but the historical story is interesting and has twists that one wouldn't imagine. Here are some passages that spoke to me: "I was his friend: I should have had a feel for the things he didn't say!" (234). "I fell once, when I was balancing on a chair, trying to lift a suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe. [Nextdoor's] cat came into the flat for the first time and settled on its haunches beside my contorted face, and put out one plush paw and touched my cheek. Then it waited beside me until I could get up. I never told anyone, even Jimmy, that I thought about that cat when I was away, and I tried to get back from trips in daylight, so that I could hope to see it. It had never allowed me to touch it, and sometimes I wanted to so badly that it was a pain in my chest. [...] I never meant to love a cat; it created my love for it. Maybe I was betraying the little thing by leaving--" (34). BTW, I'm counting this book toward my big reading challenge for this year: the 5 Books, 5 Countries, 5 Continents challenge. |
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Arrived safely in Philly today. Thanks morse for sending me this. It is on my wishlist. Also a part of our Irish Swap :)
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