Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Punished: A mother's cruelty. A daughter's survival. A secret that couldn't be told.

I just finished teaching a unit on personal narratives to my sophomores, so throughout the unit we read excerpts from various published memoirs.  For one particular unit, I found 10 different introductory paragraphs to memoirs to show them how to write a strong introduction.  After going through my very short list of memoirs I've read, I started just searching "memoir" in Amazon and reading samples of any book I found.  Punished was one of those books.  I found the first chapter suspenseful, used it in my lesson, and purchased the book.

I'm still not sure why I read it, though.

The book describes a girl who, throughout her entire childhood, suffers from serious physical and sexual abuse.  It's a more mature version of A Child Called It.  The horrendous punishments the child's mother inflicted on her get worse every time you think they can't.  Then, her grandfather sexually abuses her while her mother sits back and knowingly allows it to happen.

Was the book interesting?  Sure.  Did it keep me turning the pages?  Yes.

But here is my overall problem with this memoir - nothing happens to the "bad people."  In fictional stories, I can deal with sadness and cruelty and evil characters.  But I do not want to read a true story that ends with the antagonist simply getting away.  I think one of my main motivations for turning those pages and suffering through the descriptions of this person's life was the anticipation for that moment when justice would be served.  But it never was.  The father (who also turned a blind eye to the physical abuse) dies of cancer.  The grandfather dies of heart disease.  The mother lives a long life and dies naturally, with her daughter by her side.  No one is punished.  Everyone is forgiven.

I am a Christian person and I believe in forgiveness... but I also am a mother and I believe in hanging someone up by their fingernails (or worse) when they treat children this way.

If you enjoy memoirs, this book is well-written and it is an interesting story.  Just don't go into it expecting a happy ending.  The author turns out all right in the end, but that's all the happiness you'll get.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Since our days of dating, my husband and I have debated over our two favorite authors, Hemingway and Fitzgerald.  They were wrote during the 1920s and both were expatriates in Paris - but their resemblance seems to end there.  Hemingway's writing reflects his history with journalism as he writes with short sentences and his stories lack superfluous details.  Fitzgerald, on the other hand, writes stories rich with symbolism and imagery.  I recently read The Sun Also Rises for the first time and found it, well, disappointing.  I kept throwing the book down and asking Jesse, "What's the point?!".  Honestly, I was bored.

After finishing it, I began The Paris Wife, a book someone mentioned to me over the summer.  And it was this book that made me interested in Ernest Hemingway while simultaneously refueling my love of Fitzgerald.

The Paris Wife is a popular nickname for Hadley Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway's first wife, because she is the woman to whom he was married while living in Paris and starting his writing career. This novel of the same name is written from Hadley's point of view and, although it's fiction, is based on factual events and correspondence between the Hemingways.  I found it thoroughly fascinating.

The book begins when Hadley meets Ernest and ends right after their divorce.  Shortly after their marriage, the two moved to Paris and started friendships with several other authors, including Gertrude Stein and the Fitzgeralds.  They struggle financially while Ernest tries to make a living of his writing, but they travel constantly.  

I had read that The Sun Also Rises was based on real events of Ernest's life, and this novel describes that trip from Paris to Spain and the friends upon whom Ernest based his novel.  It was interesting to read the "other side" immediately after reading the story.

The entire time I read The Paris Wife, I felt like it was an autobiography.  So much of the book sounded familiar to me from my studies of the Lost Generation writers.  I looked up Hadley Hemingway after finishing the book and discovered the book is based entirely on true events.  The only fictional part of the novel are the emotions of the characters and the conversations they have (although even some of those are based on real correspondences).

It's a great novel, especially for someone interested in the 20s, in Paris, in Spain... in reading.  Sure, it made me appreciate The Sun Also Rises, and I'm sure that after I research that novel more and I teach it, I'll grow to understand its significance in the literary world - but for now, I'd recommend The Paris Wife first.