Friday 11 May 2012

Read in 2012 - 11: The Woman Upstairs

Another free Kindle edition I found while, for the first two or three weeks after I received my Kindle, I was almost daily browsing the Kindle store, building up a library of well over 80 books (fiction and non fiction), almost all of them for free.
This novel by Mary W. Walters was first published in 1989, Amazon tells me.

The main character, Diana Guthrie, is seen heading back to her childhood home, where she has not been for 15 years; driven away by not only a strict and seemingly loveless mother, but by the generally restrictive atmosphere in the small town she grew up in as well as by a tragic event that changed her life forever and left her scarred.

She is going there now because she feels it is the right thing to do: she was told her mother is dying.

Already on the way back, her mind goes back and forth between past and present. We learn about the way things were dealt with at the Guthrie household, and begin to understand why Diana wanted to leave, HAD to leave in order for being a person in her own right.

Once arrived, Diana gets mixed reactions from the people there - her brother, an old school friend, the housekeeper, the family doctor and others -, and she herself is thrown into a turmoil of conflicting emotions, too.

It takes a while before she decides to climb the stairs and meet "the woman upstairs" who is, of course, her mother. 

The book ends on a note that leaves the reader to imagine what Diana is going to do next; stay or leave again? Has she really begun to come to terms with the past?

I liked this novel. It was well written, atmospheric, and I could picture the places and characters in my mind. There were a few surprises for me; for instance, many authors like to use the weather or seasons for dramatic effect, and at first, I was sure Mary W. Walters was about to do that as well, and expected the oppressive humid heat described from when Diana first lands at the airport to dissolve into a huge tempest at the culmination of events and emotions. It does not happen, and that is maybe her way of using weather for dramatic effect - nothing goes "bang", suddenly changing Diana's whole approach to the past and to her mother, but things happen more subtly here, which is probably a lot more difficult to write.

I recommend this to anyone who likes stories about people who manage to find their own way.

11 comments:

  1. Hello Meike:
    You are certainly making very good use of your Kindle, something which we are continuing to resist. How do you feel about it in comparison with having, and most likely owning, a real book which is there on the shelf for all time? And into which others may readily and easily dip?

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    1. Hello Jane and Lance, I find the Kindle ideal for travelling (obviously), since how else can one carry an entire library around without adding more than a few 100g of weight to one's luggage? And I find reading on it just as pleasant as in a book of paper. Also, with paper I always have the environmental aspect in mind; the production of a regular book consuming a lot of energy and, in spite of the more frequent use these days of recycled paper, still costs a great many trees their lives. Of course, the production of an item such as the Kindle takes its toll on the environment, too...
      When it comes to books I want on my shelves, that will never fully go away. I have some topics on which I have a nice little collection, and I also prefer reading non-fiction (which often contains pictures, diagrams and so on) on paper for the better visualization of their content. So, to me, the Kindle is never going to be a replacement, just an addition, but one I really like.

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  2. I love the free Kindle books. I've also purchased a slew of them but am neglecting it as of late. Need to stop taking books out the library!

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    1. Don't stop getting books from the library, Sonia! Libraries need people - not just readers who download online content :-)
      My local library does offer ebooks, which remain active on the ebook reader for a certain period and then can not be read any longer. Sadly, though, they are not offering them for Kindle...

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  3. I still prefer a 'real' book and get a warm feeling just looking at them on my shelves and being able to re-read at my pleasure. But, I do enjoy my Kindle also. My daughter gave it to me for Christmas last year and I went wild buying every book by a certain author that I fell in love with! Since that time I've moderated my appetite and am following Meike's path to the free books or the really cheap books. Kindle is convenient to take-along for waiting rooms, travel, the beach, etc., but will never take the place of a well loved and worn book on your shelf.

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    1. Exactly, Jill!
      And as for re-reading at your pleasure, of course you can do that on the Kindle, too.
      I will delete those books which I did not like, but the ones I liked will stay there until I will be running out of space - which won't happen for a long time yet.

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  4. Believe it or not I have spent ten minutes trying to comment - I really am fed up with blogger!

    Interestingly the same Kindle book is £2 on UK Amazon.

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    1. Scriptor, I believe I chanced across a special offer when I found the free edition. If I now go to the product page through my Amazon Kindle account, it tells me that it is now priced at 3,51 $.

      Thank you for having persisted in trying to comment!

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  5. That's odd. Why do you pay in $ (US$?). Is there not a Deutche Amazon?
    You've certainly built up quite a library already. At the rate I'm reading books at the moment 80 would be enough for a good few years! I keep a lot of reference books on my Kindle though.

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    1. Oh, I am sure these will last me for quite a long time to come.
      And yes, of course there is Amazon in Deutsch. But they do not offer books for free, and certainly have a lot less choice when it comes to books in English. Since I like reading in English - especially if the book was originally written in that language -, that is the best way for me to fill my library.

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    2. Duh. I can be a bit thick sometimes although the 'no free books' wouldn't have occurred to me.

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