The Sea Lady in Constant Reader

Oct 24, 2007 Dottie rated it really liked it

Shelves: reading-list, ocitylibrary, 2007

Well, I've given this time to percolate and then gone back to see what I said in discussing it and then percolated some more. Am I ready to write a review yet? Not quite. But I am moving it up to five stars from the four I gladly gave it at first blush.

I'll be back soon. See, back already.

Here goes -- this book was just 'okay' as it started out but I fell into it quickly enough. In looking back at my comments, I've decided that I fell into this for several reasons -- not the least of them is th Well, I've given this time to percolate and then gone back to see what I said in discussing it and then percolated some more. Am I ready to write a review yet? Not quite. But I am moving it up to five stars from the four I gladly gave it at first blush.

I'll be back soon. See, back already.

Here goes -- this book was just 'okay' as it started out but I fell into it quickly enough. In looking back at my comments, I've decided that I fell into this for several reasons -- not the least of them is the fact that this is about people who are my contemporaries in age and stages of life and that the characters as written became very real people rather immediately -- a factor which I greatly appreciate in any book. I cared about the people in this book and they are lingering in my mind even now.

Secondly, this echoed a recent experience of my own when attending a reunion. I wasn't knowingly going to an encounter after many years with an old flame as was Ailsa but even so my experience resonated within the context of Ailsa and Sandy and Humphrey's stories. In meeting with a person whom I hadn't seen in 45 years, I heard a story from the person which was at direct odds with much of what I and others I know had recalled as being true of this individual; yet there were bits of the story as this person told it which rang small far-off bells in the far, cobwebbed corners of my memory -- I took that as a sign that I may have felt, known something back 45 years ago which would lend credence to those bits -- others, seemed to have no such response to what was said and to corroborate the overall impressions the group had held back then of this person. All very mysterious and vague.

Thirdly, the underlying themes which I took from the book were those of making a choice/decision or opting to make a choice by not deciding; random encounters, serendipitous events, and the resulting direction which one's life takes as a result and the multiples of which each of us human individuals is composed -- the person we are in our own eyes and the person we are in the eyes of every single other being with whom we have interaction in the course of our lives and the multiples of each of those persons as they are known by every being with whom they have interacted. See the connection to the encounter I mentioned above? So the question remains -- how well do we know either ourselves or the others who have been slightly or intricately involved in our lives?

This last item is one of my "soapbox" topics -- I am always ready to say that each person sees an event or a relationship or "X" in his or her own way and to propose that not even when two people/siblings are raised by the same two parents in the same household and go through the same gatherings/events and so on do those two (or more) siblings tell the same story of any one moment in their shared lives. This happens for many reasons -- and this author did a beautiful job of laying out this thesis and telling a marvelous and lovely story in the process.

Highly recommended. ...more

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Dec 16, 2007 Barbara rated it really liked it

As usual in Drabble's writing, this was intelligent and layered. The characters of Ailsa and Humphrey were complex and, for me, believable. But, there were lots of little details that didn't feel resolved. And, some of the minor characters were less developed than I thought they should be. It also suffers from the desire to tout it as the story of a romance among people in their 60's that someone imagines all of us boomers want to read. Instead, I think it's a story about looking back at life. ...more

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Dec 19, 2007 Mary Ellen rated it liked it

Two former lovers, in their 60's, journey through England (and through their pasts) to their first meeting since their separation decades earlier, a ceremony at which they'll both be honored by a small university in the north of England. Good prose, closely observed characters, a bit dull. ...more

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Dec 09, 2007 Jim rated it liked it

Shelves: literary

A clever and highly readable summing up of lives of multiple public figures in their 60s. The characters are interesting, and even though everyone is over 60, the book avoids killing off all of the characters, a seemingly common ending for books on older people.

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