#1 Between Shades of Gray

I finished Where Do I Go? and, to be honest, I was disappointed with the ending. I like stories with happy endings, but this story had a fairly negative ending. Philip annoyed me for the entire book. He was never appreciative or supportive of anything Gabby did. He was so insensitive to her emotions, and often put his job before his family. When Gabby went to visit her mother, she found out that she was really in no condition to be living on her own. So Gabby brought her mother and her mother’s dog back with her to her home in Chicago. Gabby was only doing what she thought would be the best and safest decision. She had to take take of her mother! However, Philip was furious. He demanded that Gabby find a shelter for her mother in a week, or else he would push her mother out. Gabby tried, but was unsuccessful. Philip was fed up with Gabby “ruining everything”, so (spoiler) when Gabby returned home from work, she found that Philip had changed the locks to their condo, moved all of her belongings out, and he had left with their two sons. I thought this was a pretty lame move. The only silver lining was that Gabby felt like she found her calling and a new kind of family at the Manna House, which is where she ends up. I was so disappointed that Philip and Gabby couldn't work out their issues, and that Philip ran away from his problems.

Anyway, I have moved on. I just finished another book, Between Shades of Gray. This is NOT to be confused with that other book about shades of gray-- this is completely different. This is a historical fiction heart wrenching story of a girl named Lina and her family’s journey after they are forced from their home by the NKVD. In Russian, the NKVD stands for the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs. In other words, it was the precursor to the KGB, and served as a secret police under the direction of Joseph Stalin. When Lina's father is separated from her, her brother, and her mother, Lina is determined to find a way to contact him so that, no matter what prison or work camp they end up in, he will be able to find his family. Lina is a talented artist and uses whatever materials she can find to draw pictures detailing the places the NKVD takes them. Some of these drawings she is able to mail, but others she must pass along, hoping they will eventually reach her father’s hands.

One cool technique the author uses is the element of flashbacks. She will connect something in Lina’s life, to a scene or some event that occurred before they were taken. Often these are memories of her father, or other happy memories with her family. These flashbacks juxtapose sharply with Lina’s current wretched living conditions in the work camps, but they help to provide more information about the characters and their relationships. I think the flashback is a very cool writing tool, and maybe I will try to apply it to my own writing.

#1 Where Do I Go?

Since I last posted, I finished Outliers. Though some disagree with Gladwell, I thought what he had to say was very interesting and, at the least, gave me a new perspective on success, and somethings to think about. But moving on.

Since we have started our fiction unit, I figured now would be a good time to start reading a fiction novel, and I am glad I did. The non fiction material I have been reading is great, but I forgot how much fun reading fiction is. I have been reading fiction for AP English, but after Hard Times, The Things They Carried, Heart of Darkness, and The Sun Also Rises, I was ready for something a little lighter and much more palatable. So I chose a book off my bookshelf my mom got for me last Christmas that I hadn't read yet.

Now I am reading Where Do I Go? by Neta Jackson. In this story, the main character, Gabrielle “Gabby” Fairbanks has just moved to Chicago (woo!) with her husband Philip. Almost immediately, the tension between Gabby and Philip becomes clear. Philip is very stressed at work. They moved to Chicago for his work, and he is stressed with the challenge of pleasing his new business partner and getting their architectural firm off the ground. For him, everything is about appearance and making sure everything is perfect. On the other hand, Gabby is having a difficult time adjusting to this new life, feeling confined to their downtown high-rise. With their two sons away at boarding school and Philip completely absorbed by work, Gabby feels very much alone. She is at a point where she is searching for something to do. She feels as if she is losing herself, and she desperately wants to find some way to do something meaningful with her time. After Gabby meets a homeless woman, Lucy, her journey begins. She gets involved with Mana House, a homeless shelter, and is quickly hired onto the staff after learning they need a program director. Gabby couldn’t be more thrilled. She is making new friends, helping others, putting her skills to use, and even reconnecting to her long-lost faith. But Philip is just not happy, and I really wish he was. When Gabby initially tells him she is applying for a job at the homeless shelter, he is furious! He says that she should be making connections with people in the city, just not those kind of people, because that will not help his business. He also tells her that she can only work part-time because he needs Gabby to be available for business dinners or other outings with his partner, the Fenchels. Philip seems too controlling and ungrateful,and I don’t think I like him very much.

I really like the story, and can’t wait to see how this all unfolds, but there are a couple of things Jackson does that bother me. For one, she always talks about race when describing a person. Even after the reader knows a character’s ethnicity, it keeps coming up. Now that I think about it, I guess it is really Gabby describing them, and this would make more sense because it gives the reader information about her character. For example, when Gabby first meets Josh and Edesa she writes “A young couple with a baby in a stroller turned the corner by the Laundromat and walked briskly toward me. He was white, she was black Interesting. That would raise a few eyebrows back in Petersburg...Was Josh the baby’s father? He seemed so fair...The mother was definitely black, and the baby...hard to tell”(23). It is like Gabby has never seen a biracial couple before. Three or four references are made to the fact that the receptionist at Mana House is Asian, and the doorman at Gabby’s condo is specifically African American. I am just wondering why there are all the racial descriptions, and if they are necessary. If they were used one time, like when Gabby first meets these people, I would understand that. But it seems that Gabby uses race as the identifying feature for the people she doesn't know very well.

Also, something that really annoys me is how Jackson writes her comparisons. Again, I guess I can’t really attack the author because this is Gabby’s story, and her feelings, but nonetheless, I think the similes are absurd. Here are just a few examples:

“my face heated up like a hot flash”(115)

“He took me away from a job I enjoyed back in Petersburg, left our boys in the academy there, and hung me in a penthouse like a pair of panties on a clothesline”(88)

“Running barefoot in the sand a couple of days ago, sending the gulls fluttering like dancing girls with gauzy white scarves”(58)

“The choir looked like a ten-bean soup packet, all sorts of colors and shapes”(54)

“The, like a dog coming out of the water and shaking off every last drop, I mentally shook myself and got out of the bathroom”(49)

There are many more like these, and most of the time I don’t take them seriously, I just crack up because they sound too ridiculous!