Tag Archives: second chances

Clock Dance

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9780525521228Anne Tyler has once again made an extraordinary story out of ordinary lives in Clock Dance. Set in her favorite city of Baltimore, the story moves through decades of a typical family – until a phone call for help changes everything.

Tyler has the talent for making her characters relatable. It’s hard not to identify with the ftizzy haired little girl who dutifully does what she is told, and who becomes the woman who follows her husband – not once but twice. Perhaps the first time is for love, despite the pull to pursue her own talents, but the second time seems complacent and secure.

The story follows Willa as a child living with a mercurial mother who periodically abandons the family and a meek but reliable father, then jumps ten yesrs to Willa as a junior in college, in love with handsome and self- centered Derek. “It was tempting,” she thinks, “to consider the adventurousness of throwing everything over to marry Derek” – and she does, forsaking her own dreams.

In twenty yesrs, Willa has become a widow with two grown sons and an estranged sister. Life is not hard but certainly  not interesting as she follows her widowed father’s advice to live moment by moment.   The story jumps again to 2017. Willa has remarried another self-centered, patronizing clone, Peter, and settled into a golfing community in Arizona. Willa doesn’t play golf.

When Willa gets a phone call asking her to fly from Arizona to Baltimore to care for the nine year old daughter of her oldest son’s former girlfriend, whom she’s never met, the pull to be needed is too irresistible. Nevermind the girlfriend snd her daughter are no real relation to her; she goes.

In Baltimore the cast of characters expands to a gritty chorus, offering Willa another chance at having a family, and forcing her to become the person she was meant to be.

Perhaps the ending is predictable, knowing Tyler’s affinity for second chances and redemption, but it is nonetheless satsfying. Fans of Tyler’s writing will recognize her signature talent for instilling insight and humor into everyday living, and her message is clear – we don’t have to settle for other’s expectations of us; we can take a leap into life and dance – no matter what time in our lives it is.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

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9781616203214_p0_v2_s260x420Gabriells Zevin’s The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry vicariously fulfills the dream of many readers to own a bookstore in a small town, where being able to read all day and talk about books, trumps profits.  With clever references to familiar books and pithy quotes from favorite authors, Zevin offers a handy resource of good reads along with a quirky love story that will charm you as she follows a recognizable formula for second chances.

Both A.J. and his wife, Nic, are literary beings who have forsaken the grueling years they could have dedicated to writing their dissertations to open a bookstore in a small town off the coast of Massachusetts, accessible only by ferry. After Nic dies in a car accident, A. J.’s life follows the usual pattern of despair – until two seemingly unrelated occurrences change his life forever: his valuable first edition of a rare Edgar Allan Poe book is stolen, and a toddler is abandoned in the stacks of the store’s children’s books.  Zevin follows up with a slow-moving romance connecting A. J. to a publisher’s rep, a plot twist involving his dead wife’s sister, and humorous episodes as A.J. revels in his new role as father to the precocious young girl left in his store.

The story has the pace and flavor of a “Major Pettigrew” or Beginner’s Greek, with characters who don’t fit the mold and a story line that easily moves from slight mystery to poignant moments and satisfying resolution, with lots of bumps along the way.  The ending is contrived and not as happily-ever-after as you are led to expect, but I enjoyed this fast read about redemption through books – a good one for book lovers.

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Life After Life: A Novel

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“Ursula’s life begins, ends, rewinds, begins again – and again – in Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life.   Would she ever get it right?

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Atkinson’s use of rewriting the same chapters cleverly demonstrates that road not travelled.  Each time Ursula dies, the story rewinds to the alternative possibility.  If the cord had not strangled her at birth, if she had not reached for her doll and fallen off the roof, if she had not drowned in the ocean, or died young from the flu – Atkinson notes: “Such a fine line between living and dying…”

As the story progresses, and Ursula grows into her sixteenth birthday, another milestone, the difference between being kissed, by whom, and how, changes her future.  When she decides to leave her bucolic home as a young British woman venturing into the world, the choices seem inconsequential but they are not.  Atkinson writes Ursula into several possible lives – after she forgoes university to attend secretarial school – or graduates and spends a year abroad.  Even her study major makes a difference.

As Ursula matures, she begins to recognize the signs of a former life, sometimes to the point of trying to control the outcome.  When Bridget, the maid and carrier of the deadly flu, returns again and again, ending Ursula’s new lives, Ursula decides to take care of matters herself by pushing Bridget down the stairs.  Her parents, taking a dim view of her déjà vu, sign her up for a psychiatrist.

When the book opens, Ursula has just shot Hitler.  Eventually, her life rewinds back to this scene, but not before Atkinson has filled the pages with scenes of war from all perspectives and from both sides of the Channel.  Ursula’s roles in different lives range from British air raid warden to Eva Braun’s confidante at Hitler’s retreat in Berghof.  Descriptions of the Blitz carry the central focus of the novel and take you not only to the underground holes and devastating terror, but also to the lives of those trying to survive.

As I became invested in Ursula, the story became interactive.  I worried over her, knowing that the murderer was around the bend, or that the wall would fall on her – wanting to shout to her to stop.  When all seemed lost, I knew Atkinson would soon rewind and all would be well again in another chance – wouldn’t it?

Eventually, Ursula realizes her retakes in life carry a purpose.  She decides to focus and use her decisions to get her there – until eventually she does loop back to the opening chapter and change the world.  But Atkinson does not end the book there; she keeps rewinding…

“Don’t you wonder if just one small thing had been changed in the past…surely things would be different.”

What if one small thing had been changed in your life – in your decisions – makes you wonder….

My reading of the book reflected its theme: I started reading the first few pages; Ursula died.  I stopped, packed, saved her for my long plane ride.  Ursula lived again, and died again as an infant. When Ursula finally progressed to her fifth birthday; my Kindle battery died.  Travel in Spain distracted me and I did not return to the book – until a friend gave me a paperback copy of Atkinson’s first book Behind the Scenes at the Museum – and I remembered.    What would have happened if I had never finally read the book?  Like Ursula, I would have missed the most important part and an amazing adventure.