This
book can be read on many levels : feminine point of view,
racism,couple relationship, mother/daughter relationship...it
provides many stimuli for reflection.
This
book is about relationships, it starts with one falling apart, seems
to be something normal, a simple book for girl with a broken
relationship. The reader waits for some dis-adventures and a sweet
big love as a happy ending but...
After
two pages you can get that the language is rough and there are too
much colloquial words for a romantic fiction.
And
then, by reading, you get that as reader you are aware of everything,
the writer lets you know the thoughts of each character, she gives
you the illusion of being the writer herself. The reader knows
more than the characters, because they do not understand what is
happening to themselves. The main one, Bride, after the break is
quite discombobulated. Her body is slowly changing and going back to
her childhood. Her mind, that initially was going super fast toward a
rich and sparkling future is jumping back and forth. The reader is
guided, not nicely, in front of a past life where violence and abuse
were seen through child’s eye, astonished and ingenuous eyes that
try to explain situations they can not understand.
Bride
has a Post Traumatic Stress “Attitude”, it's more than a disease,
it's a sort of mood. She does not have a solid background of love
(maternal love) to help her to cope with the difficulties she tripped
on.
She
is unconsciously searching for what she knows, and what she knows
best is to be abandoned, left because of her skin, her being the
wrong one.
She
is filling her life with beauty, richness and luxury to compensate
for the lack of caring love.
The
fact that her body is magically going back to her childhood stops
her mind from thinking rationally. Her mind that initially was going
super fast toward a rich sparkling future is now jumping back
randomly remembering memories.
The
Author accompanies you inside Bride's thoughts, you can feel how
scared she is, how puzzled and shocked, but at the same time you
(ommiscent reader) can see the solution and the first instinct is to
ask the character why they do not change their behavior, why they do
not follow another path...
The
writer lets you feel the Bride’s frustrating situation, she is
impotent and you are impotent as well.
It's
like a “beat romance” but the road is Bride's life and the trip
is in her past, while you are traveling you can see how difficult it
was to be black at that time (unfortunately not so ancient) in
America.
When
you read the thoughts of the persecutor you immediately get how
people think: nothing is related to others; when we do something we
persecute our goals, no matter how it makes other people suffer. What
people do are things and those things can affect other lives, we do
not care, because we do not know.
This
is a book about motherhood seen through childhood eyes. The main
character is progressively becoming a child meanwhile she is becoming
a mother. The real cruel mother, her mother, has no remorse: she has
done her best for those times with those believes...
The
style is crude and perfectly adheres to the contents. The solution of
letting the reader to put himself in the character's shoes is super
smart...Ken Follet's style, totally different plot, definitely less
commercial.
