Object Lessons
Author: Quindlen, Anna
Published in: 1991
Reprinted by: Ballantine Books (1992)
Number of pages:323
Main characters:
Maggie, Connie, Tommy,...
Plot:
Comments:
The book does contain lots of events and stories connected with the characters and so it is difficult to distinguish really the "point", because the book sometimes becomes quite messy. Although the characters mentally develop and mature, it often seems to me, that their behaviour is not very let's say explainable. The level of English is OK and there are some good ideas, however as such the book didn'd impress me.
Extract:
It wasn't only the dead that lived with you that way. When she closed her eyes she could hear Helen say "Not to decide is to decide," and her mother saying, with a great throb in her quiet voice, "Not good or bad. Things just are." She knew that twenty years from now she would still hear all those voices in her head, and she knew that as long as they stayed there she would be able to do all the things she had to do, to make all the choices she had to make. But yesterday, as she had walked down the aisle, looking into the curled heart of the pink rose at the center of her bouquet, she had heard another voice, telling her to lift her chin, to keep her shoulders square, to walk slowly. And suddenly it had come to her, as she was dancing with her father, the stars of darkness exploding inside her closed lids, that the voice she was hearing was her own, for the first time in her life.