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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Writing is gorgeous, but overall felt very “meh” about this one.
Enthralling book, but not entirely my cup of tea. It was a little hard to follow at first, which made it difficult to get started. But it all came together.
What a gorgeous book! A history of the world through the eyes of a historian, one who is brilliant, daring beautiful, vain, cruel, judgmental, and narcissistic. That woman, Claudia, is on her deathbed remembering a life fully (if not always well) lived. I don't really know what to say about it. It is about love of many stripes, duty, war, beauty, and maybe the divine or its absence and definitely about the meaningfulness and meaninglessness of language. It is funny and heartbreakingly sad, and the language (meaningful or meaningless as it may be) is just achingly beautiful. I read this based on the rhapsodic reviews of several trusted GR friends, and as I would expect they were 100% right. Thanks, Candi, Lisa, Robin, Julie, and the others who let me know I needed to read this.
Death is imminent, breathing down our neck each passing day, but few think of it until the time of facing the lady in black. Even then, it’s not she to whom we turn our thoughts, but to the memories of the life we lived and that eternal question, could it have been different? Claudia Hampton does that while a “moon tiger” burns slowly next to her headboard. Its red eye shines in the darkness. Just like Claudia's life, its life is coming to the end as the spiral body turns to ash, stirring remembrance of the life and another night where other “moon tiger” burned next to two lovers before they separated forever.
That is how the dying Claudia initiates the history of her world, a kaleidoscope composed of reminiscences as she guides the reader through her life, sometimes narrating a certain event from the perspective of multiple characters. She's not an easy-to-love character, on the contrary. It's easier to hate her than to love her. Claudia is cold, seemingly emotionless, contradictory, and obnoxious. She's judging people. She finds her daughter boring, her brother's wife stupid, and thinks that only with men she can have intellectual conversations.
However, Claudia is an independent woman, who easily treads through the world of men, building a career. Claudia is free from prejudices, chooses her lovers and just as easily she leaves them. Despite the cold façade, she is passionate and loves. Even her daughter although she admits it to her just before she dies, claims she's not the best mother.
Through her story, Claudia introduces us to the three men who marked her life. Brother Gordon, the only one she considered a man worthy of her and with whom she compared all the other men, except the one. His name is Tom, the British officer who swept her off her feet in Egypt where they knew each other for a short time. He was the only one who could outmatch Gordon. Then there's Jasper, the father of her only child. The only man who remained in her life, despite her disdain for him.
Claudia’s history is intertwined with love, war, passion, hatred, family relationships, pain, and sorrow. With her coldness, she hides the pain carried inside, the loss of Tom and their child. The child she wanted because it was his, so her relationship with her daughter becomes clear.
Penelope shows her talent mostly through Claudia's relationship with these three men, where a reader can feel the change in Claudia's feelings for them and notice the layers and complexity of her personality. Passion and love as she writes about Tom and their short-lived affair, respect as he recounts Gordon and her aversion to Jasper. Not only in this, but her skill also reflects in assembling images of Claudia’s life, seemingly scattered through time, sometimes decades apart, into a whole that is "Moon Tiger". Claudia is not one, but a multitude of them, as she says, and the burning moon tiger, that brand of mosquito repellent from Claudia's childhood is a perfect metaphor for our lives.
That is how the dying Claudia initiates the history of her world, a kaleidoscope composed of reminiscences as she guides the reader through her life, sometimes narrating a certain event from the perspective of multiple characters. She's not an easy-to-love character, on the contrary. It's easier to hate her than to love her. Claudia is cold, seemingly emotionless, contradictory, and obnoxious. She's judging people. She finds her daughter boring, her brother's wife stupid, and thinks that only with men she can have intellectual conversations.
However, Claudia is an independent woman, who easily treads through the world of men, building a career. Claudia is free from prejudices, chooses her lovers and just as easily she leaves them. Despite the cold façade, she is passionate and loves. Even her daughter although she admits it to her just before she dies, claims she's not the best mother.
Through her story, Claudia introduces us to the three men who marked her life. Brother Gordon, the only one she considered a man worthy of her and with whom she compared all the other men, except the one. His name is Tom, the British officer who swept her off her feet in Egypt where they knew each other for a short time. He was the only one who could outmatch Gordon. Then there's Jasper, the father of her only child. The only man who remained in her life, despite her disdain for him.
Claudia’s history is intertwined with love, war, passion, hatred, family relationships, pain, and sorrow. With her coldness, she hides the pain carried inside, the loss of Tom and their child. The child she wanted because it was his, so her relationship with her daughter becomes clear.
Penelope shows her talent mostly through Claudia's relationship with these three men, where a reader can feel the change in Claudia's feelings for them and notice the layers and complexity of her personality. Passion and love as she writes about Tom and their short-lived affair, respect as he recounts Gordon and her aversion to Jasper. Not only in this, but her skill also reflects in assembling images of Claudia’s life, seemingly scattered through time, sometimes decades apart, into a whole that is "Moon Tiger". Claudia is not one, but a multitude of them, as she says, and the burning moon tiger, that brand of mosquito repellent from Claudia's childhood is a perfect metaphor for our lives.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
No
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
medium-paced