Jacob Have I Loved<\/a>, a classic Newbery winner by Katherine Paterson which, I’m ashamed to say, I hadn’t read before. <\/p>\nThe funny thing is, reading the blurb on the back of the book, I could see why it hadn’t appealed to me as a young adult. Two sisters, one of whom everyone loves, the other of whom\u2014the narrator, Louise\u2014is overshadowed. Life in a very small town on a very small island in the 1940s. A coming of age in which Louise finds that her childhood dreams of being a waterman like her father “did not satisfy the woman she was becoming.” These things did not interest me as a young adult. I was much more interested in, as I recall, dragons, magic, suspense, and ESP. <\/p>\n
Jacob Have I Loved<\/i> contains none of these, and so it passed me by. But realistic, historical, and coming-of-age stories are a lot more interesting to me now, as a reader and a writer, so I was very excited to plunge in. Kathleen, who lent it to me, said it’s one of her all-time favorites, intriguing me further.<\/p>\n
I wasn’t disappointed. This book depicts life in a time and setting that’s unfamiliar to me as a modern urban reader, bringing it to life through loving, vivid, detailed description. I learned about boats. I learned about island weather. I learned about the changing role of women during and after wartime, and how this might affect someone growing up in a place where things don’t change very quickly. There might not be any dragons, but there’s a big storm, a crush on a MUCH-older man, and a sinister grandma, not to mention a family secret or two. I was surprised I enjoyed it so much. I still don’t think I would have been interested as a teenager\u2014just speaking of myself here\u2014but I’m really glad I picked it up now, as an adult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I haven’t posted in a while, for which I apologize. I have a backlog of reviews to write, now, because I’ve been reading like…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,5],"class_list":["post-3039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-af","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3497,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039\/revisions\/3497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}