Two Basic Rules for Bibliophile Friday: Read a book. Write about it.
Keep it clean. Be honest.
Bibliophile Friday is the 4th Friday of every month, so get reading!
My book selection: Black & White, by Dani Shapiro
Recommendation: Thought-provoking. Worth a read.
Summary:
As Ms. Shapiro’s novel opens we meet Ruth, a young mother, struggling to find her identity. Ruth discovers that she has a wonderful eye for photography, particularly for shooting nude, provocative, and unusual photos of her little girl Clara. As Clara grows up, Ruth documents her life and reaches glorious heights of artistic fame. At the same time, devastated and objectified by the constant glare of Ruth’s camera, Clara’s shame soars. Clara cannot separate her feelings about her mother and her feelings about being her mother’s “muse”: she comes to despise both. When she turns 18 she swiftly runs away.
Clara breaks completely from her past and creates a new life for herself in rural Maine. She refuses to look back until her terminally ill mother begs for her to return to Manhattan. When she does, she unearths the emotions of her youth, explores the many facets of her relationship with both her mother and her father–who, she feels–should have spared her, and faces the past head on.
My thoughts:
When I was discussing this book with my book club, I shared that there were many times it deeply disturbed me. One of the other women challenged me: “Don’t you do something similar with your blog?” she asked. I blanched. I thought about it. A lot. And to some degree, I suppose I do expose my children–more often my thoughts about my children, or parenting in general–but I don’t believe it’s the same kind of exposure. I’m very thoughtful and careful about what I post; I take care to consider my children’s feelings and what they will find when they inevitably Google themselves. I don’t expose them for my sake.
That said, I did stop and think about it. And any book that makes us stop and think is, I think, worth reading. Yes, it’s a bit uncomfortable. Yes, her mother is intense and her father folds. As a parent and daughter, I wanted to shout at them and cry with her. And, yet, as a woman I wanted to shake her, too. “Deal with this! Stop pretending it didn’t happen.”
Ms. Shapiro does a fine job of making the reader both think and feel. And that’s worth a read any day.
What are you reading? Add your link below.
