Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
After hearing Christina Baker Kline talk about her book and how it came to be, I felt like I'd already read it. Giving it 3 stars because the book is good, though for me, it felt like a re-read.
I enjoyed this well-researched story of a woman who otherwise would have been unknown to me. At first I thought the narrative would focus on Andrew Wyeth, but he was a more peripheral character and that suited the novel real well. Excellent pacing too!
I would give this a 4.5 if that were an option. I loved this story and the relationship between the main characters. They were so real and flawed and loved. I felt the secondary characters kind of ran together instead of being strong characters in their own right, which is why it's not a 5. I highly recommend.
I love Andrew Wyeth's portrait. I enjoyed the way the author turned it into historical fiction. I would have rated it higher, but it was just too depressing for me. Barely a three.
I love the blend of two forms of art with fiction and history. Very satisfying.
slow-paced
I have a soft spot for Christina Baker Kline's work, having done some work for her when I was a young college grad, and so I went into this really, really wanting to like it. I generally think her sentence-level writing is fantastic, but while I'm hesitant to speak on behalf of the disabled community, I definitely raised my eyebrows as some of her plot and language choices related to narrator Christina's disability.
Let's start with what's great about this novel. It's based on a painting by Andrew Wyeth called "Christina's World," which depicts (sort of) a real woman, Christina Olson, of whom Wyeth painted several portraits along with her brother and her house. In this novel, we go between two different time periods, one that starts with Christina's childhood and the other that starts with Christina's introduction to "Andy," the sweetheart and future husband of a friend, who ends up painting in their house every summer. Kline does an amazing job at the historical fiction aspect of this novel, bringing to life through descriptions and dialogue what it was like to live in rural Maine in the late 1800's through the 1940's. We can feel what it's like to do backbreaking labor on a farm in an old-fashioned house, where Christina is sewing clothes for her family and running wet clothes through a ringer. I felt the heartbreak when Christina's father forbade her from continuing her education so that she could help out more at home. It was sad to realize that Christina was right when she said that even the best doctors in the country couldn't diagnose her illness. Kline starkly portrays the reality of being a woman in Christina's place and time, compounded by having a physical disability.
It seems like the most common complaint about this book is that it's boring, and I can't fully disagree. It's the downside to working on a story about a real person; you're confined to the limits of what actually happened in their life, and there wasn't a lot in the way of plot twists. I think Kline could have injected more suspense into the novel by not having the alternating time periods; it was clear from the opening of the book that both Christina and her brother Alvaro are unmarried, so it couldn't be that shocking when neither of their romances panned out. However, just about the only thing that drove me forward as a reader was wondering, "How did she get from here to there?" Otherwise it would have just been the straightforward life story of a not-terribly-interesting woman who happened to be the subject of some of a famous painter's paintings. By choosing a relatively recent painting, Kline had a subject about whom much could be learned, which unfortunately limited the contours of the plot, as contrasted with something like Girl with a Pearl Earring, where Chevalier essentially created a plot from scratch using a painting as inspiration.
One thing we know about the real Christina Olson is that she had a debilitating progressive illness, possibly Charcot-Marie-Tooth, and she did not use a wheelchair but crawled around her house and land while doing her daily chores. Kline raised my hackles in the way she adopted this character's voice about her disability. Writing with Color has recently been doing a series of posts about identity stories, and how there's a difference as a white writer between writing a story that includes people of color experiencing problems in their life and writing a story that centers primarily on racism, colonial oppression, etc. One is populating your story with real, diverse characters, and one is co-opting stories that aren't yours to tell from a lived perspective you will never have. I felt like this book revolved a little too heavily around Christina's disability, including having her first memory be the onset of her illness at three years old, and there was repeated use of phrases like "shell of a body" to describe how she felt about herself and the word "normal" to talk about what she would never be. She didn't even have a personality so much as a collection of feelings related to her disability — anger at the pity others show her, pride and stubbornness in not accepting help or using a wheelchair, frustration with the limitations of her body.
Again, I haven't been able to find reviews of this book from the perspective of someone with a disability and I don't want to get outraged on someone else's behalf, but from everything I've read about the way to write characters with disabilities (such as on the excellent Disability in Kid Lit) I felt like this missed the mark. Outside of that, though, I thought it was a beautifully written, quiet novel that was hindered by the lackluster reality of its subject's life.
ETA: The phrase "I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding" was used in this book and I literally yelled out loud, "WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP USING THAT STUPID PHRASE?" It's not even a YA book, which means this phrase has crept into other genres now. Seriously. Just stop.
Let's start with what's great about this novel. It's based on a painting by Andrew Wyeth called "Christina's World," which depicts (sort of) a real woman, Christina Olson, of whom Wyeth painted several portraits along with her brother and her house. In this novel, we go between two different time periods, one that starts with Christina's childhood and the other that starts with Christina's introduction to "Andy," the sweetheart and future husband of a friend, who ends up painting in their house every summer. Kline does an amazing job at the historical fiction aspect of this novel, bringing to life through descriptions and dialogue what it was like to live in rural Maine in the late 1800's through the 1940's. We can feel what it's like to do backbreaking labor on a farm in an old-fashioned house, where Christina is sewing clothes for her family and running wet clothes through a ringer. I felt the heartbreak when Christina's father forbade her from continuing her education so that she could help out more at home. It was sad to realize that Christina was right when she said that even the best doctors in the country couldn't diagnose her illness. Kline starkly portrays the reality of being a woman in Christina's place and time, compounded by having a physical disability.
It seems like the most common complaint about this book is that it's boring, and I can't fully disagree. It's the downside to working on a story about a real person; you're confined to the limits of what actually happened in their life, and there wasn't a lot in the way of plot twists. I think Kline could have injected more suspense into the novel by not having the alternating time periods; it was clear from the opening of the book that both Christina and her brother Alvaro are unmarried, so it couldn't be that shocking when neither of their romances panned out. However, just about the only thing that drove me forward as a reader was wondering, "How did she get from here to there?" Otherwise it would have just been the straightforward life story of a not-terribly-interesting woman who happened to be the subject of some of a famous painter's paintings. By choosing a relatively recent painting, Kline had a subject about whom much could be learned, which unfortunately limited the contours of the plot, as contrasted with something like Girl with a Pearl Earring, where Chevalier essentially created a plot from scratch using a painting as inspiration.
One thing we know about the real Christina Olson is that she had a debilitating progressive illness, possibly Charcot-Marie-Tooth, and she did not use a wheelchair but crawled around her house and land while doing her daily chores. Kline raised my hackles in the way she adopted this character's voice about her disability. Writing with Color has recently been doing a series of posts about identity stories, and how there's a difference as a white writer between writing a story that includes people of color experiencing problems in their life and writing a story that centers primarily on racism, colonial oppression, etc. One is populating your story with real, diverse characters, and one is co-opting stories that aren't yours to tell from a lived perspective you will never have. I felt like this book revolved a little too heavily around Christina's disability, including having her first memory be the onset of her illness at three years old, and there was repeated use of phrases like "shell of a body" to describe how she felt about herself and the word "normal" to talk about what she would never be. She didn't even have a personality so much as a collection of feelings related to her disability — anger at the pity others show her, pride and stubbornness in not accepting help or using a wheelchair, frustration with the limitations of her body.
Again, I haven't been able to find reviews of this book from the perspective of someone with a disability and I don't want to get outraged on someone else's behalf, but from everything I've read about the way to write characters with disabilities (such as on the excellent Disability in Kid Lit) I felt like this missed the mark. Outside of that, though, I thought it was a beautifully written, quiet novel that was hindered by the lackluster reality of its subject's life.
ETA: The phrase "I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding" was used in this book and I literally yelled out loud, "WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP USING THAT STUPID PHRASE?" It's not even a YA book, which means this phrase has crept into other genres now. Seriously. Just stop.