Another good book

After finishing Ann Packer’s The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, I thought I would have a hard time getting into another book. But I was wrong. I picked up Blessings by Anna Quindlen and, after a couple of pages, was equally absorbed. Where Packer’s book is told from a very intimate first person point of view, exploring, probing, analyzing feelings and events, looking in detail at the details of everyday movements, internal and external, Blessings is a third-person narrative, the focus shifting amongst the situations so that a more panoramic view of an intimate situation is explored. It is a beautiful book about the uniqueness of human resources, how personal change comes in so many ways. The story-line is about a young man, the caretaker for the estate of an austere, rigid older woman. He finds a newborn baby on his doorstep and decides to care for the baby, treat her as his own. He learns, grows, loves, matures, through this process, and in a strange, unexpected way, so does the woman. I didn’t feel as close to the people in this novel as I did in Ann Packer’s, but I was definitely absorbed by their story. Both books are on my best books list.

Of course it has been hard to find another book to match these two. Still working on it!