Relationships Theme

SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
This book was my book club selection in November (I think) and when I finally managed to get my hands on it over Thanksgiving weekend, when I expected to get quite a chunk of reading done at the farm in NC and on the drive home, I had too much fun to sit down with it. When I finally started it I found it to be rich and dense, like an amazing chocolate cake that you can NOT eat without milk. Milk turned out to be 2 extra months of reading time, which is really unusual for me. Anyways, I finished the book on my Kindle, which was a Christmas gift from my high school roommate Becky Wang, yesterday. It was a moving and well written novel, with fabulous characters and a plot, which, although I knew its outline, still unfolded with enough complexity that I was engaged the whole time I was reading. The relationship between the narrator and the other characters was both intimate and in a certain sense, because of the retrospective tone, objective enough. The relationship between Sophie and her past was tormented, and between Sophie and Nathan was the most lovely destructive mad affair that I may have ever read. There really were vocabulary words that I had to look up throughout the novel-- which my kindle did for me, which was great! It was fun to read a book that I found both very readable and very challenging, in its language and in its content. I'm looking forward to watching the movie sometime later this week -- I love me some Meryl and Kevin!

THE PARIS WIFE by Paula McLain
This is my current book club selection. It was chosen as a counterpoint or follow up to LOVING FRANK, and instead of the first wife of Frank Lloyd Wright, it was about the first wife of Ernest Hemingway. It was good, but not great. It was a quick read, and sad in the end, because although the characters did love each other, it wasn't enough. But we've all read that story before.

LIKE CRAZY
This movie won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for a drama, and its leading actress Felicity Jones won the Special Jury Prize as well. She was good. They fell in love, it fell apart, they held on to it. The cinematography was quite lovely -- the intimate closeups and soft lighting of the third-ish date when the connection really solidifies, the comfortable shots at the bar or at home where the naturalness of the in-between-romance is captured. The whole thing felt believeable and real, and they were both kind of jerks and they both loved each other, and I was relieved when they broke up and hopeful when they got back together. Well done -- I would definitely recommend this.