They were a curious family, a law to themselves, separate from the world, isolated, a small republic set in invisible bounds.

The Rainbow  by D. H. Lawrence
First published in 1915

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
The Rainbow is a multigenerational story about the Brangwen family, who live in the English countryside in the early 1900s. We start of with Tom Brangwen, the youngest of his clan, who marries Lydia, a Polish immigrant who has come to live in their small town with her daughter, Anna, after her husband dies. Tom and Lydia have two sons, Fred and Tom, and Anna marries her cousin, Will Brangwen, and they proceed to have a whole mess of children - Ursula, Gudrun, Theresa, Catherine, Billy, and Cassandra. Mostly we follow the love affairs of the various generations, which are full of existential ups and downs (and are generally a bit too roller-coaster-y for my taste), and occasionally something else happens. Ursula has a brief but passionate love affair with her school teacher, Winifred, and then several other dalliances with men, but ends up sort of happily alone at the end of the novel.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well, dear blobbists, I did not like this book. As you will see from my comments, I found the family name to be challenging (Brangwen) and honestly, very little happened over the course of the book, which I have a hard time with. I'm not a "plot or bust" kind of reader, but I would love for Something to take place over the course of your 459 pages. 

I've taken a brief dive into the history of this work, and it seems that it was banned in Britain (and many copies were burned) because of its 'frank treatment of sexual desire' for about a decade (1915-1926) after an 'obscenity' trial. It's interesting, because it seems that he was much maligned for his more overt, sexual writing, and I have to admit that that's the only part I really liked! I honestly finished the book and thought, man, this guy should have written romance novels, or maybe even erotica. Maybe the world just wasn't ready for him! In any case, I could very much take or leave hte rest of the novel. But here are the rest of my thoughts: 

Brangwen (mouthful, Too many Brangwens)
This name was such a mouthful to work through in my head each time. I kept wanting the G not to be there, or for it to be Braggen or Brannon or something, but it just felt clumsy in my brain, which made the fact that we were spending Multiple Generations with the Brangwens rather frustrating. Also, Anna marries her cousin, Will, and while they're technically not blood related, because Anna was Lydia's daughter from a previous marriage, it's still a Leeetle too close for comfort. Her dad makes a joke as they're signing the wedding certificate that there are "too many Brangwens" on the paper, and I was like, is that #incesthumor? #notmytaste 

Don't judge a book by its ERRONEOUS cover
My copy of this book has a ridiculous cover, a painting of a baby with a blanket with white and rainbow stripes. I would like to create a formal complaints board for book covers that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the actual content of the book, or the meaning of the title. Seriously - the rainbow is an actual rainbow here, folks. It's getting at a bigger metaphor, but it would be SO easy to just put a painting of a Rainbow in the sky. There must be hundreds of those. Thousands, even. Am I the only one that is bothered by things like this? Feel free to join my board if it bothers you, too. 

Woman as pseudo-protagonist
I thought it was interesting that while there were several male characters who sort of seemed like the main character, most of the people we followed closely were women. This felt kind of revolutionary for a male writer from the early 1900s. On the whole, it felt like he wrote women well, but I couldn't really understand why we was writing from their perspective. 

Man as father
I think it's fascinating how when we're growing up, we use one item or one person to represent a whole world of items. This line of Anna's, on Tom Brangwen: 

The only man she knew was her father; and, as he was something large, looming, a kind of Godhead, he embraced all manhood for her, and other men were just incidental.

Reminded me of how my sister said that she was so confused the first time she met a mom who was petite, and short, and generally a small person. She was so used to our mom, who's 5'11, that she couldn't process the idea of a mom that didn't fit that image. I like the idea that we all go around making up images and definitions of concepts and ideas, and life slowly deconstructs and reconstructs them as we age. 

Organ playing
Ursula goes to the church with her father, Will, while he practices the organ, and it reminded me of going to church and listening while my mom practiced the organ. At one point, she also plays a little too vigorously and leaves a mess, so they aren't allowed to come back for a while, which I found quite amusing. 

Referents and Reverberations

On drinking
This scene of Tom Brangwen (the first Tom Brangwen, of several) drinking:

He was by nature temperate. Being sensitive and emotional, his nausea prevented him from drinking too much. But, in futile anger, with the greatest of determination and apparent good-humour, he began to drink in order to get drunk. 

 He had an idea that everybody in the room was a man after his own heart, that everything was glorious, everything was perfect. When somebody in alarm told him his coat pocket was on fire, he could only beam from a red, blissful face and say "Iss-all-ri-ight - iss-a'-ri-ight - its' a' right - let it be, let it be-" and he laughed with pleasure, and was rather indignant that the others should think it unnatural for his coat pocket to burn: -it was the happiest and most natural thing in the world - what?

Reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from David Copperfield, when Davy first gets drunk:

Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his forehead against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as 'Copperfield,' and saying, 'Why did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn't do it.' Now, somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the looking-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant appearance; and my hair - only my hair, nothing else - looked drunk.

On growing up
This line: 

How did one grow old - how could one become confident? 

Reminded me of one of my favorite Virginia Woolf lines, from To the Lighthouse:

What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life? -startling, unexpected, unknown?

On Sundays
This line about Sundays, which I absolutely loved: 

It came to be, gradually, that after church on Sundays the house was really something of a sanctuary, with peace breathing like a strange bird alighted in the rooms. Indoors, only reading and tale-telling and quiet pursuits, such as drawing, were allowed. Out of doors, all playing was to be carried on unobtrusively. 

Reminded me of this line from Swann's Way, when the young boy narrator's aunt scolds him for reading during the week - What! still amusing yourself with a book? It isn't Sunday, you know!"

On tumultuous love
Many lines, but in particular this one, reminded me of the wildly up-and-down love in The Beautiful and Damned: 

Unless she would come to him, he must remain as a nothingness. It was a hard experience. But, after her repeated obliviousness to him, after he had seen so often that he did not exist for her, after he had raged and tried to escape, and said he was good enough by himself, he was a man, and could stand alone, he must, in the starry multiplicity of the night humble himself, and admit and know that without her he was nothing. He was nothing. But with her, he would be real. If she were now walking across the frosty grass near the sheep-shelter, through the fretful bleating of the ewes and the lambs, she would bring him completeness and perfection.

On early love
This depiction of Will and Anna Brangwen in the early days:

This then was marriage! The old things didn't matter any more. One got up at four o'clock, and had  broth at tea-time and made toffee in the middle of the night. One didn't put on one's clothes or one did put on one's clothes. He still was not quite sure it was not criminal.

Reminded me of this moment from The Master and Margarita:

During the Maytime storms, when streams of water gushed noisily past the blurred windows, threatening to flood their last refuge, the lovers would light the stove and bake potatoes. The potatoes steamed, and their charred skins blackened their fingers. There was laughter in the basement, and in the garden the trees would shed broken twigs and white clusters of flowers after the rain.

And these, from Their Eyes Were Watching God:

It was so crazy digging worms by lamp light and setting out for Lake Sabelia after midnight that she felt like a child breaking rules. That’s what made Janie like it. They caught two or three and got home just before day. Then she had to smuggle Tea Cake out by the back gate and that made it seem like some great secret she was keeping from the town."

“Ah’ll clean ’em, you fry ’em and let’s eat,” he said with the assurance of not being refused. They went out into the kitchen and fixed up the hot fish and corn muffins and ate. Then Tea Cake went to the piano without so much as asking and began playing blues and singing, and throwing grins over his shoulder. The sounds lulled Janie to soft slumber and she woke up with Tea Cake combing her hair and scratching the dandruff from her scalp. It made her more comfortable and drowsy.

Lines I Liked

• Waves of delirious darkness ran through her soul. 

• If she could but get away to the clean free moonlight.

• In the morning the sun shone, she got up strong and dancing. 

Words that were new to me:
farouche - sullen or shy in company


oriflamme - a scarlet banner or knight's standard; (literary) - a principle or ideal that serves as a rallying point in a struggle

recusant - a person who refuses to submit to an authority or to comply with a regulation

stook - a group of sheaves of grain stood on end in a field

wattle - a material for making fences, walls, etc., consisting of rods or stakes interlaced with twigs or branches

Well, I'm off to enjoy the rest of this sanctuary Sunday, with 'peace breathing like a strange bird alighted in the rooms'. Wishing you that same peace and sense of sanctuary, and the ardent hope that tomorrow morning, the sun will shine and you will get up strong and dancing. I'm off to read Purple Dentures, or something of that sort. 

I needed to be alone so that he could come back.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Published in 2005

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

This is the story of Joan and John
and Quintana, their only child.

We start at the end; John has died,
Joan is left to deal.
Quintana, just married, is ill herself,
In the ICU trying to heal.

We follow Joan as she lives the year,
Trying to sort herself out.
Quintana gets better, then worse,
Then better, fighting bout after bout.

Joan thinks that maybe John will come back,
Perhaps dying is not fully real.
She writes and thinks and waits and hurts,
Grieving, not wanting to feel.

In the end, it's Joan, on her own, alone,
Muddling her lone way through.
Quintana is healthy for a time, not long,
The family of many now few.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear blobbists, 

I finished this book rather quickly, but I needed some time to sit with it before I could blob about it. It was dark, but it wasn't so much the darkness that stayed me, but the contemplative nature of the writing. If I had to say which books this reminded me of most, I think I would say The Tale of Genji or The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. There's something very dreamlike about the writing, and it feels almost painfully honest. 

Without further ado, I'll share my thoughts. 

Writing to find meaning
I found it fascinating that Joan was using this work to explore her own grief, and it felt beautifully intimate in that sense. Here are two lines I liked that illustrate this: 

The way I write is who I am, or have become. This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning.

Who is the director of dreams, would he care? Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?

Grief, unexpected
I have experienced some grief in my life, but the most recent, and in some ways most immediate, loss that I underwent was the recent passing of my dear cat, Susan. Those of you who follow my blob regularly know that she meant a very great deal to me, and we had almost eleven excellent years together. Still, I found that her death came with many surprises. 

This line - Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it - felt very apt to me. I found myself wanting her ashes, wanting an urn, wanting to make a shrine, all things I had not imagined I would want. I did not know how I would want to grieve her until the time came. 

And this line - Only the survivors of a death are truly left alone - struck me, too. I felt particularly alone after Susan died because I was the only one for whom the loss was so total. She lived with me, and it was just we two, and so for no one else was the loss so apparent, so continuous, so ever present. I can only imagine the multiplication of this pain if this loss were a partner, a lover, a creative collaborator, and a best friend, all of which were true for Joan and John. 

Drawing the circle
Joan sets the scene for us the day her husband dies. She and he were returning from the ICU where they were visiting Quintana, their daughter, and they were back in their pleasant New York apartment. I love this line about a fire in the fireplace: 

Fires said we were home, we had drawn the circle, we were safe through the night.

It seems so poignant because of course this fire does not keep them safe through the night. It is true, though, that we create auras of coziness and warmth and we do feel a certain protection from them, but they cannot keep death from our door. 

They know before we do
As Joan explores the last weeks of her husband's life, looking back in retrospect during the year that comes after, she realizes that he seems to have known his own death was in store. She thinks of this line: 

Only the dying man can tell you how much time he has left. Chanson de Roland

and realizes that there were small clues, small moments, in which he seemed to suggest that he knew his time was almost up. Susan was sick with something - what exactly is still a bit unclear - but she lost a lot of weight, and then in the end, she stopped eating and drinking. On the last day, the day I was to take her to the vet to have her put to sleep, we laid in my bed for hours, and she slept right on my chest, over my heart, something she had never done before. I don't know what I believe in as far as spirituality is concerned, but I know in my heart that she knew this was the end. I believe that she told me when it was time. 

Later, Joan sees things that John left - notes and messages, and wonders to herself - When did he begin seeing himself as dead?

Magical thinking
Admittedly, I knew nothing about this book before I read it (because, as you know, readers, I do not like to be told what a book is about or what I will think of it before I read it) but this meant that I mistakenly thought it was about magic, when it reality, the "magical thinking" was really more like wishful thinking. Here are some examples of this: 

After John's death in NY - I found myself wondering, with no sense of illogic, if it had also happened in Los Angeles.

On wanting people to leave her alone - I needed to be alone so that he could come back.

On buying scrubs at the hospital store when Quintana is in the ICU again in CA - So profound was the isolation in which I was then operating that it did not immediately occur to me that for the mother of a patient to show up at the hospital wearing blue cotton scrubs could only be viewed as a suspicious violation of boundaries.

Death and dying
Joan explores many fictional representations of death throughout the book, looking for meaning or moments of resonance. I liked this particular thought, which is in reference to the story of Alcestis, the mythical queen of Thessaly, wife of King Admetus: 

If the dead were truly to come back, what would they come back knowing? Could we face them? We who allowed them to die? The clear light of day tells me that I did not allow John to die, that I did not have that power, but do I believe that? Does he? 

Admittedly, the rhymer in me wants that last line to read "but does he believe that? Do I?"

Death, a disaster to be averted
I read a book recently called God is Red: A Native View of Religion by Vine Deloria, Jr., and there were many interesting things in it, but perhaps the one that stuck out to me most is the idea that in western culture, death is some sort of villain or enemy or trap, that if we're just careful enough, we can evade, whereas in the tribal culture, death is a natural component of the life cycle, and while losses are mourned, they are also expected. This line of Joan's reminded me of that: 

How open we are to the persistent message that we can avert death. And to its punitive correlative, the message that if death catches us we have only ourselves to blame.

Referents and reverberations
In another amusing twist, one of the authors Joan looks to is D.H. Lawrence, who is the author of the next book on my list. This is the line she references: 

D.H. Lawrence - I never saw a wild thing/ sorry for itself

Lines I Liked:

• We are not idealized wild things. We are imperfect mortal beings. 

• The craziness is receding but no clarity is taking its place. 

• On the peacocks near one of their homes - At dusk they would scream and try to fly to their nests in the olive trees, a fraught moment because they would so often fall.

New to me:

jacaranda tree - a sub-tropical tree native to south-central South America that has been widely planted elsewhere because of its attractive and long-lasting pale indigo flowers. 

Well, dear readers, that is all I have to say today. I have a new adorable feline friend - Twix is her name and playing is her game. She knows she is not to replace Susan in this household, but to join the cat energy of our home, and I think Susan would be amused by her vim and vigor. 

If you have lost someone or some thing, I hope that this post made you feel a bit less alone. If not, I hope we didn't bring your mood down too much for this beautiful Sunday. 

Sending love, hope, and hugs your way, today and all days! Keep safe, keep faith, good night.