I just read your review on Franny and Zooey to my husband. We recently reread F&Z outloud, and your take was spot on. Omg, the cigarettes! We had both read it in high school, decades ago, and didn’t really remember a thing about it but that we had liked it then, and we loved it now. It is a challenging read at times and I really found myself wondering what my 16 year old self had thought of it? Margaret Drabble is one of my most favorite authors, so I’m always happy to see love for her. I’ve been thinking about The Sea Lady a lot lately—I may need to reread soon.
I am so glad you enjoyed it. It's endlessly wild to think about why books we hand to teenagers and why, and then how those books get relegated to some sort of school reading list purgatory when so many benefit from being read at different moments in a life. I, too, wonder what my teenage self made of Salinger; I think I was very enamored of the style and felt an inchoate sympathy for the ideas, but reading him as an adult, the punch in the heart hits me harder, maybe because I have more lived experience with disillusionment/heartbreak. I have not read THE SEA LADY; will have to look that one up!
RE: Kid stuff: think you might appreciate Shaun Tan's picture book, "Cicada." In prep for the double brood emergence.
I just read your review on Franny and Zooey to my husband. We recently reread F&Z outloud, and your take was spot on. Omg, the cigarettes! We had both read it in high school, decades ago, and didn’t really remember a thing about it but that we had liked it then, and we loved it now. It is a challenging read at times and I really found myself wondering what my 16 year old self had thought of it? Margaret Drabble is one of my most favorite authors, so I’m always happy to see love for her. I’ve been thinking about The Sea Lady a lot lately—I may need to reread soon.
I am so glad you enjoyed it. It's endlessly wild to think about why books we hand to teenagers and why, and then how those books get relegated to some sort of school reading list purgatory when so many benefit from being read at different moments in a life. I, too, wonder what my teenage self made of Salinger; I think I was very enamored of the style and felt an inchoate sympathy for the ideas, but reading him as an adult, the punch in the heart hits me harder, maybe because I have more lived experience with disillusionment/heartbreak. I have not read THE SEA LADY; will have to look that one up!