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Book ReviewsA Northern Light |
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Book: A Northern Light
Written by: Jennifer Donnelly |
Publisher: Harcourt Paperbacks
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5
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Surprised by how good this is...
Rating:
5 / 5
(warning: Contains spoiler!)
I have lived all my life on the edge of the Adirondacks, and when I heard about this book (I am a librarian) I purposely did NOT read it because it gets discouraging, even infuriating, reading historical books and Adirondack books wherein you can tell the author knew nothing about the topics.
Then I went to a conference and saw Ms. Donnelly, a beautiful, model thin blonde who drove up to the Adirondacks from New York just to talk to us. Oh, NO. THIS woman has written a book about an average looking young woman who lived in the Adirondacks in 1906?
However, when she spoke, passionately, about a young woman, still missing, suspected murdered by her husband, about her own mother's stories from Germany, about her love of the written word, I was won over and got A Northern Light. WOW.
As others have written, it is very difficult to place a character sympathetic to today's audiences in the turn of the century. Ms. Donnelly succeeds in giving us a believable, very human heroine, a plot that satisfies despite its twists and turns, and a realistic, earthy setting. Her knowledge of the Gillette case, of historical vocabulary, and of local history are impressive.
When the character expresses bafflement at tourists who call her North Woods "The Adirondacks" I am reminded of the many outsiders who have moved to Corinth from downstate and proceeded to tell us how to live. It helps the whole setting ring true.
I care what happens to Mattie, to Weaver (her best friend) to all the families scratching along by serving the tourists. I feel the horror as Mattie slowly realizes that the dead woman in the parlor was pregnant and that is why her death was not an accident.
I am won over.
Growing up in the north
Rating:
4 / 5
A Northern Light is a story of a girl who has a dream. 16-year-old Mattie wants to become a writer, but she made a promise to her late mother. She promised she would watch her sisters and help her father on the farm. Though she has a full scholorship, and a plan to work at a local hotel with her friend Weaver, she does not want to break her promise she made to her mother, and she doesn't want to leave her new beau Royal either. What will she do?
A Northern Light
Rating:
3 / 5
A Northern Light
-"To the death, Miss Gokey," he said solemnly.
-"To the death, Mr. Smith."
Unfortunately, death it was for the young woman who was drowned unexpectedly, a murder that later shocked the small town where we make our setting. A Northern Light is a story written by Jennifer Donnelly. It incorporates a true story about a tragic murder that occurred in 1906 that inspired Theodore Dreiser to write his book, An American Tragedy.
We find our heroine living on a farm by Uncas Road in Eagle Bay, a blink-and-miss town even in those days. Mattie Gokey is a genius with words, but all of her writings seem to become morbid or sad; she told her teacher that she didn't want to "lie," that life isn't filled with just happy endings. Which she knows well since her mother just died of cancer and her brother is gone.
Mattie has a friend in her small town that is going to attend Columbia University the following tear named Weaver Smith. Mattie's teacher Miss Wilcox badly wants Mattie to ho to college. Mattie wants to go too, but her father doesn't have enough money, or help, since Mattie's mother died. Matt had to admit that the reason for her not going went deeper than that. Would she let a promise keep her back from her dreams?
There is also the problem of a stack of worn letters tied up in a faded ribbon, which fell into Matt's unsuspecting hands, by someone who wanted them destroyed. She tries to get rid of them, but is continually foiled until she finally gives in to the crinkled notes and whispers that escape them. Wanting to know their secrets she starts reading them one night very late and discovers the truth of the accident.
The beginning of this book was rather slow. I think the main characters become real to you, but everyone else you just get bits and pieces like snatches of a song that you can't remember all toe words to. The author couldn't tall the life history of everyone, but there were so many things left unsaid.
The book also down plays the murder a lot. The author needed to in order for her own characters and plot to be in the lime-light, but the mention of it was so fragile and almost annoying in it's briefness that you nay wish it weren't even there. Yet, it's outcomes were a major influence in the shaping of all the characters that it's impossible to leave out otherwise the characters would not be dynamic, but static.
The reader may also think it was hypocritical of the author to glorify writers who told life as it truly was, with all the sadness and to condemn hood authors like Charles Dickens, and Louisa May Alcott for "lying" when in truth doesn't that mean that she lies as well?
I really liked getting to know the characters, though. It was easy to identify with Matt even if I could not completely understand what it's like to loose a family member. The book also gives a good glimpse at what life was like so long ago. The story has a simplicity that still manages to show the depth of heart and pain the people underwent.
A Northern Light is a fast read which I would recommend to readers who like happy ending and faithful friends. It was enjoyable and an informative journey through the life of a young girl to imagine what she did and how she survived to save so many others.
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