Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Home to Holly Springs...

The characters in Jan Karon's books are so three dimensional that you expect to meet one of them at the market on Saturday. I love them all...

Karon's books are truly about the Christian principles of grace, love and redemption and about perfecting the ability to forgive. But, if there is a dark theme in her books that theme is from Exodus 34:7 where it says, "visiting the iniquity of the fathers up on the children... unto the third and to the fourth generations."

Father Tim spends an inner lifetime trying to understand his father, wondering why he never received or could earn his love, praying for his father and looking for grace to have touched his life. What he finds is a terrible incident that left an emotional scar in his father's life that did not heal and tormented his grandparents, mother and self even beyond his father's passing. While he doesn't understand, he tries to empathize and to forgive and to find peace.
The book is a gem.. but, I always listen to these books on tape and there was a new reader .. and I missed the deep, resonant voice of John McDonough who sounds just like Father Tim.. to me.

Snow Flower & The Secret Fan...

Snow Flower & The Secret Fan is a book about the exquisite pain, maneuvering for power and the friendships that are created in the upper room behind the lattice window of a Chinese home in the 1820's...
Lily narrates this book about her early life from the time that she walked a long the river bank with her older brother and the cool river water ran over her feet... to the time when she meets her laotong and signs the contract of friendship that will last her entire life... to the time when she and her laotong have their feet bound and broken to become golden lilies... to the time when she makes grave errors in her fidelity and empathy with her friend... to the time when she makes great efforts to forgive and redeem herself from her mistakes.

The book shows how easily we can dismiss the suffering of another and even how hard it is too see and to empathize from a place of relative comfort. It is about the emotional violence that those who truly love each other still commit against those the beloved without feeling or seeing the hurt that is caused.

Beautiful prose that tells a story of great suffering from a place of dignity rather than pity. Snow Flower would approve.