Lovely Little Shelf

Day #2! We’re back home and getting everything together.  You seriously would never believe the number of toys Isaac has from his party.  We could open a frigging daycare Anyway, unpacking from a trip and still posting a review? That’s why I love the review-a-thon! Also, has anyone used Linky Tools for a Wordpress blog? My one for the original sign-up worked perfectly and displayed the links on the page, but the ones for the daily check-ins are setting up the list on a different page.  This is my first experience with Linky Tools and I am kind of at a loss.  Any help would be much appreciated!

The Book: Cane River, by Lalita Tademy

The Story: This is the story of four generations of women living along Cane River in northern Louisiana.  The author, Lalita Tademy, had kind of started researching her family- she got the basic bones of a family tree- and she headed to the Cane River area to talk to people and find out more about her ancestors. While she was there, her family kind of turned into “real people” if you know what I mean, and she just fell in love with these incredible, strong women who shaped her past in ways that she didn’t even previously realize.  Based on that, she decided to write a novel about the women who came before her.

The first generations of women were born into and lived their entire lives in slavery.  They were illiterate and had to work hard for every little thing.  As the generations progressed and slavery was outlawed, we kind of see this family start to rise from the ashes and take hold of this fighting spirit that seemed to be in their DNA.

What I Thought: Let me just say: this is going to be one of those reviews where I go on and on and on and never say anything bad.  Yup. A gusher.

I loved this. Let me say it again. I loved it.

I was a bit cautious going into this book because it is an Oprah book. You know my feelings on Oprah books, but a reader saw it on one of my monthly TBR shelf pictures, commented that it was good and that’s all it took- I trust your judgement, guys! So glad that I listened.

This being a book about slaves in the deep south, it could have headed in the “depressing” direction in a hurry.  These women had very little going for them: they were slaves who were raped by white men on the regular.  They lived in the same tiny, tiny house their whole lives and were pretty much at the will of every one around them.  The thing is, they were these strong, incredible women. Sure they screwed up and had crazy quirks and so on, but they were not victims of their situation in any way.  They loved deeply and lived as fully as was possible.  Watching the generations progress and kind of grow and change was a beautiful thing.

I love genealogy for this very reason.  It’s easy to forget sometimes that we don’t just get our looks from our ancestors.  We are born where we are born because of them, we have a quick temper, a funny laugh, a buoyant spirit because our ancestors had these things.  There is a real power in that and I think that Lalita Tademy captured this perfectly.

She wrote big, full characters that I just absolutely fell in love with.  Sometimes in generational books like this, it is easy to focus on one or two of the generations more, but in this book I felt like all four were given equal footing and shined just as brightly as the others.  Because it took place over something like 150 years there was this sprawling cast of characters but I never felt like I got lost.  Every character seemed like a real person and it was easy to remember who everyone was and what meant in the story.

I just loved it. It was beautifully written, wonderfully constructed and just kind of wonderful.

Conclusion: One of the best books I’ve read this year.  Read this. Now.