The first book I read was The Liars' Club. Mainly due to the fact that it was the first one handed to me. The story opens up with a memory of the main character at age 7. It starts with a doctor asking her to show him her marks which thoroughly confused me into thinking she had either been beaten or raped or something of the like. I figured out pretty quickly that I was way off in my assumption and she actually had no marks whatsoever. All I could really take from it is that it was a painful memory due to the parts that her mind blocked out.
After this scene she takes a bit to go into the story of her parent's meeting. Her mom jumps into marriage after marriage very quickly due to her mother's religious views about pre-marital sex. She ends up having a total of seven husbands, which to me seems ridiculous. I think another one of her reasons for jumping into a marriage is her need for stability. She doesn't have much balance in her life so she assumes that a husband will fix that. Later during the chapter, we find out that she's been taken Away for being "Nervous". Her father is the next to be explained. He comes off as the stable person in the family. Very social, he meets with friends a lot to play dominoes, drink and tell stories.
The second book I read was The Memoir and the Memoirist. The book opens with a teacher teaching a class of 15 how to write a memoir. The class, though small, has a wide variety of people. During the first chapter he goes over a part of his life where he tried to save his marriage by moving to California which only ended it even quicker.
The story goes over the entirety of the nine week class and at the end the teacher has had such an influence that the class doesn't want it to end. He was obviously a very good teacher since the class was pretty much offering to do anything to keep the class going.
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Good reflection. I'm interested that you read the father as a positive person in Karr's life despite his drinking and unreliability.
ReplyDeleteI like that you bring us to the place where she's blocking memories. What is the effect of telling us truthfully that she's not telling the whole truth?
Good writing here, but do your best to do a bit less summarizing. A good way to get toward analysis is to take some snippets of text and read them very closely.
Great writing, well. Better than my blog anyway. I like how you picked out parts from the story so people actually know you've read it
ReplyDeleteWhats up Phil, I enjoyed your blog. It gave a good summary of everything that happened, and helped me remember things that I had forgotten. I'm also interested that you think the father was a positive person. Personally I couldn't decide if he was a good or a bad influence. Maybe he's a little bit of both.
ReplyDeleteHi! Danielle here. I think you made an excellent reflection and review of the story. I thought it was great that you noted on the fact that she blocked out parts of the memory because I think that is probably very important to the story and I think most people tend to attempt to either dwell in or block out their most painful experiences.
ReplyDeleteI think you payed attention to the details of the book and I agree with Bill on the fact that you had some great writing but I think you should do less summerizing and more into analysis but I think we were all a little confused upon what we were actually suppose to do. Peace.