Δεν έχω λόγια για να εκφράσω πόσο πολύ μου άρεσε και με συγκίνησε αυτό το βιβλίο.Όταν το ξεκίνησα ήμουν κάπως καχύποπτη καθώς το πρώτο βιβλίο της Ντόνελι, οι Επαναστατημένες ζωές δεν με είχε ενθουσιάσει τόσο.Το «Βόρειο σέλας» όμως, παρόλο που από τους περισσότερους θεωρείται το λιγότερο καλό βιβλίο της συγγραφέως, εμένα κατάφερε να γίνει το αγαπημένο μου δικό της, αλλά και ένα από τα καλύτερα βιβλία αυτής της χρονιάς μέχρι στιγμής.Η Μάτι είναι μια νεαρή κοπέλα που ζει σε μια επαρχιακή πόλη της Αμερικής στις αρχές του 20ου αιώνα μαζί με τον πατέρα της και τις τρείς μικρότερες αδερφές της,καθώς η μητέρα της έχει πεθάνει και ο αδερφός έχει φύγει από το σπίτι.Παρόλο που είναι αναγκασμένη να φροντίζει την οικογένεια της και να κάνει πολλές και δύσκολες αγροτικές δουλειές, το όνειρο της Μάτι είναι να γίνει συγγραφέας και να πάει σε ένα κολέγιο της Νέας Υόρκης προκειμένου να σπουδάσει λογοτεχνία.Η ίδια λοιπόν βρίσκεται διχασμένη ανάμεσα στο να μείνει πίσω και να ακολουθήσει μια συνηθισμένη ζωή μαζί με την οικογένεια της αλλά και μαζί με το αγόρι που είναι ερωτευμένη, τον Ρόγιαλ ο οποίος δεν συμμερίζεται καθόλου τις φιλελεύθερες ιδέες της, και στο να φύγει από το μέρος στο οποίο ζει και να ακολουθήσει το όνειρο της, κάτι που θα την οδηγήσει όμως στο να μείνει ολομόναχη καθώς όλοι είναι αντίθετοι σε αυτήν της την απόφαση εκτός από την αγαπημένη της καθηγήτρια και τον καλύτερο της φίλο τον Γουίβερ.Το καλοκαίρι όμως ενώ η Μάτι δουλεύοντας σε ένα ξενοδοχείο, θα γνωριστεί με μια ένοικο η οποία θα τις εμπιστευτεί κάποια γράμματα και την επόμενη μέρα θα βρεθεί νεκρή μυστηριωδώς, η ίδια διαβάζοντας τις επιστολές και προσπαθώντας να λύσει το μυστήριο, θα καταλάβει τι πρέπει να κάνει και ότι ο δρόμος που πρέπει να ακολουθήσει είναι αυτός της καρδιάς της.Ήδη από το προηγούμενο βιβλίο είχα καταλάβει πως η Ντόνελι κάνει μεγάλη και ενδελεχή έρευνα για τα βιβλία όμως εδώ,αντί να μας κουράζει με πολλές λεπτομέρειες, καταφέρνει να σκιαγραφήσει τόσο καλά την κοινωνία εκείνης της εποχής με τόσο παραστατικές εικόνες, που αισθάνθηκα να σαν ζούσα και εγώ μαζί με τη Μάτι και την οικογένεια της. Καταφέρνει επίσης με πολύ ρεαλιστικό τρόπο να μας παρουσιάσει το πώς αντιμετωπίζονταν οι γυναίκες τότε και πόσο δύσκολο ήταν για κάποια να αντιταχθεί στον ρόλο που την ήθελε καλή μητέρα και σύζυγο αλλά τίποτα παραπάνω.Αδυνατώ να πιστέψω ότι θα υπάρξει κοπέλα η γυναίκα ακόμη και σε αυτή την εποχή που δεν θα ταυτιστεί έστω και λίγο με τη Μάτι και δεν κατανοήσει τα συναισθήματα της.Είναι πραγματικά μια αξιοθαύμαστη ηρωίδα γεμάτη αγάπη και τρυφερότητα για τους γύρω της αλλά και γεμάτη όνειρα και φιλοδοξίες.Προσπαθεί να κάνει το καλύτερο για την οικογένεια της και για το αγόρι που αγαπά από την άλλη όμως αντιλαμβάνεται ότι η κοινωνία που ζει δεν της ταιριάζει και ότι οι ανοιχτοί ορίζοντες της την οδηγούν εντελώς αλλού.Η αυτοθυσία της από τη μια είναι ενοχλητική αλλά από την άλλη τόσο κατανοητή που εξ αρχής ήθελα το καλύτερο για την Μάτι και για την ζωή της.Παρόλο που ζει σε μια εντελώς διαφορετική εποχή, ένιωσα να ταυτίζομαι πάρα πολύ με αυτά που σκεφτόταν και αισθανόταν.Μπορεί πλέον οι γυναίκες και η μόρφωση τους να διαφέρουν πολύ, ωστόσο νομίζω πως στην χώρα μας αλλά και σε πολλές άλλες, οι γυναίκες ακόμη θεωρούνται υποδεέστερες και δυστυχώς οι περισσότερες δεν παλεύουν ή δεν μπορούν να παλέψουν για τα δικαιώματα τους.Διαβάζοντας το «Βόρειο σέλας» αναρωτήθηκα πόσα πράγματα θεωρούμε οι άνθρωποι στον 21ο αιώνα δεδομένα, από ένα τετράδιο μέχρι ένα σπίτι, και πόσο πολύτιμα είναι τελικά αυτά που έχουμε, ενώ εμείς είμαστε συνέχεια ανικανοποίητοι και θέλουμε περισσότερα.Πόσο πολύτιμη είναι η φύση και πόσα μπορεί να μας προσφέρει που εμείς τα γνοούμε.Και το σημαντικότερο πόσο σημαντικά είναι τα βιβλία αλλά και η μόρφωση και πόσα πολλά μπορούν να μας δώσουν, πολλά περισσότερα από έναν υπολογιστή.Γιατί όπως λέει και η Μάτι μπορεί τα βιβλία να μην δείχνουν την αληθινή ζωή πάντοτε αλλά προσφέρουν όνειρα και ελπίδες.
Last year, I used to go every day to the library of the bank where my dad works at (ain't that a mouthful or what?!)—I was homeschooled, and it was the perfect place to study for upcomin’ exams. There I stumbled upon a Reader’s Digest Condensed Version book, which basically features up to 4 abridged books in one volume, and one of the novels it featured was A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly (which I later found out was called A Northern Light in the states). Since I am the queen of procrastination, I began reading it and soon was so swept away by the beautiful story I couldn’t stop until I was finished. And when I did reached the ending, I loved it so much I was actually CRYING and doing my best not to cheer aloud since I was in, you know, a library.So when I got the chance to order some books from Amazon some time ago, I had only a quota of four books and I selected this one first-up. My sister was confused, since she couldn’t understand why I was ordering a novel I’d already read when I could order a new very-highly-anticipated one. That’s because I love this novel so much it was never even a question I’d get a copy for myself. And soon after it arrived, I began reading it, tossing away the resolution to not before exams (see, exams never seem to end in my life). It was just too tempting! And the book…WOW. The condensed version did NOT do it justice. Because I savored every single word of it and only fell even more in love with it, so much that it’s officially my No. 1 favorite book EVER, Hands. Down. And if you know me, you’ll know it’s not very easy to get that title. But that’s just my history with the book. And now I’ll review it, and hopefully I’ll do it justice so that you’ll go read and fall in love with it too. I mean, it DID win the Carnegie Medal, was a Michael L. Printz Honor book, and fetched numerous blurbs as well as starred reviews, which in itself makes it a must-read book.The first time I read this novel I was a bit puzzled by the simplicity of the prose. At that time, I believed you needed to use Big Words often to be a good writer (thank you, Steph Meyer!), and this novel barely employed any. And I was struck by how, despite this, the novel read so beautifully. And that’s when I learned that the best kind of writing is not the Overwrought Kind, but the one that seems utterly effortless. Mattie is a lover of all things literature, and you wouldn’t believe how well the author has incorporated this fact into the story. This book pretty much nails the rule of ‘show, not tell’. Every day Mattie learns a new word, its origins and all, and does her best to use it in that day. And a fellow word-lover meself (actually, I can safely bet that whoever’s reading this review is also fond of words, right?), I loooved this aspect.And you can see how much she loved words through the following passages:"Well, it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths...The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he's been and marrying the heroine and happy endings and all that. Like Sense and Sensibility or Persuasion. But the second kind, they show you life more like it is. Like in Huckleberry Finn where Huck's pa is a no-good drunk and Jim suffers so. The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up... Why don't they tell the truth? Why don't they tell how a pigpen looks after the sow's eaten her children? Or how it is for a girl when her baby won't come out? Or that cancer has a smell to it? All those books...I bet not one of them will tell you what cancer smells like... I don't mean to be coarse. I just...I don't know why I should care what happens to people in a drawing room in London or Paris or anywhere else when no one in those places cares what happens to people in Eagle Bay.""I had looked around. I’d seen all the things she’d spoken of and more besides. I’d seen a bear cub lift its face to the drenching spring rains. And the silver moon of winter, so high and blinding. I’d seen the crimson glory of a stand of sugar maple in autumn and the unspeakable stillness of a mountain lake at dawn. I’d seen them and loved them. But I’d also seen the dark of things. The starved carcasses of winter deer. The driving fury of a blizzard wind. And the gloom that broods under the pines always. Even on the brightest of days.""What I saw next stopped me dead in my tracks. Books. Not just one or two dozen, but hundreds of them. In crates. In piles on the floor. In bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling and lined the entire room. I turned around and around in a slow circle, feeling as if I'd just stumbled into Ali Baba's cave. I was breathless, close to tears, and positively dizzy with greed."The setting is so, so vivid, and I felt as if I were really transported back to the early 1900s. In the same way, I felt like I personally knew every character. And their feelings! They all mirrored mine so perfectly it was almost creepy. Especially how bad Mattie's got it for Royal, her spankin’ good-looking neighbor, regardless of the fact that I knew how hopeless it was. I distinctly remember the first time round I read this book, how my heart both soared with hers and then came crashing down when things got rough.And it’s not just this: Mattie yearning to be both an educated woman and eventually an author, as well as have a family and a loving husband…it was so very relatable. Especially since I often go through the same dilemma, even in this day and age, thanks to the backward society I’m from. I remember this quote really affected me:And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't.So, yeah, that’s my review. Jennifer Donnelly is now one of my all-time fave authors, and her novel Revolution also definitely deserves to be read. In fact, if you read both and compare then, you’ll be seriously shocked the same author penned both books. I mean, yes, they’re both at least partially historical, but that’s kind of as far as the similarities go.
What do You think about A Northern Light (2004)?
This is one of my favourite books I have read. It is brilliantly written and the characters so real and truthful. A Gathering Light, or A Northern Light is based on the real life case of Grace Brown and the letters of her you read within this book are her actual letters.Around the story of Grace Brown, is the story of Mattie who is one of the most real, memorable characters written I have come across. I love Mattie, she feels real to me and it is as if I really know her. A feeling I am sure she will understand.Mattie to me is as memorable and as charismatic as Cassandra Mortmain from I Capture the Castle (which is just about my favourite book) and I think they would have been friends. Of course, they are quite some years apart. Maybe in this fictional world, Cassandra read a book by Mattie Gokey.In 1906 Mattie Gokey is given a bundle of letters by Grace Brown who asks her to burn them. Mattie loves reading and lives in books and words and imaginary worlds where the good guys are good and the bad bad. Where there are happy endings or bad people get what they deserve.Just like she becomes involved with the stories she reads, she becomes involved in Grace's story too.A Northern Light tells Mattie's story - her wonderful story with her wonderfully strong voice. How she loves to play with words and look after her family and experiences love and friendship and hardship and joy and loss and everything else.If you love reading you will probably see yourself in Mattie. Her passion is so great she carries it through all her life - even though real life isn't like books. This is something she ponders. One day Mattie will write a book and it will be a truly great one that is about truth - about what really happens and how people really feel. I wish I could read it.
—Fiona
I don’t quite understand why this book hasn’t caught my attention earlier. It is excellently written, features a strong and likable heroine and perfectly captures her hopes and fears in an era so different to our own. It touches on a lot of issues – racial injustice, the situation of women at the beginning of the 20th century, poverty and family ties – and it does so in a very realistic way. It doesn’t look at things through rose-coloured glasses, and it certainly doesn’t offer an ending with a bow safely tied around all problems, but that is just the way I prefer endings with books like these. Life seldom offers cure-alls.At its core, though, this book is a book about women and the problems they faced, the restrictions imposed on them, the difficult decisions they had to make in order to fulfil their dreams and the consequences these decisions so often had. It follows Mattie, a sixteen-year-old girl dreaming of going to college in New York City and becoming a famous writer. Unfortunately, Mattie’s family situation doesn’t allow for dreams: Her mother died of cancer, her older brother has run away and her father has lost all his joy of living. Money is tight. Mattie is required to care for her younger sisters and help at the farm and expected to marry soon and become a farmer’s wife. Her father refuses to acknowledge the chances New York offers for her. Mattie is torn between wanting to be there for her family and wanting to make her dreams come true. Working at the Glenmore hotel gives her the chance to earn her tuition, but will she be able to leave everyone she loves behind?Told in alternating chapters – past and present merging towards the end (loved this style), A Gathering Light brilliantly captures the hopes and dreams of a young woman and the general feeling of the era and time. Mattie’s voice is spot on; the language is poetic but not overly so and evokes an overall feeling of nostalgia, of things ending, new ones beginning, of lost hopes and lost chances, with just the right amount of humour and lightness.The mystery revolving around a young woman drowning in the lake is not so much a mystery, but more so just the most important one of the many episodes Mattie encounters on her way that help her make her decision at the end.This book is not weighed down by an all-consuming love story, but I would have wished for the romance to be a bit more … romantic and for me to actually be involved in it. It is important to Mattie, but it was pretty clear for me as the reader that her choice would never make her happy – even if she wanted to believe otherwise. Random things I loved: Mattie’s word-of-the-day ritual and the "word wars" she fought with her friend Weaver, Cook the cook, Miss Wilcox’s library (so jealous) and the way the girls dealt with the guy from table six.Something I wanted to add: I've only read one other book by Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution, and it's amazing to see how different the two books are in voice. I loved both of them, but I really applaud Jennifer Donnelly for successfully capturing two heroines who are poles apart.
—Janina
“I had looked around. I’d seen all the things she’d spoken of and more besides. I’d seen a bear cub lift its face to the drenching spring rains. And the silver moon of winter, so high and blinding. I’d seen the crimson glory of a stand of sugar maple in autumn and the unspeakable stillness of a mountain lake at dawn. I’d seen them and loved them. But I’d also seen the dark of things. The starved carcasses of winter deer. The driving fury of a blizzard wind. And the gloom that broods under the pines always. Even on the brightest of days.” Mattie’s voice is incredibly poetic and even the simplest descriptions can give goose bumps; however, I think it is also very important to note that her voice is not superfluous or affected. I never cringe with the insincerity of a passage or the discomfort of a moment heavy with artificial contrived descriptions.tThe story describes Mattie’s coming of age at the turn of the century, in a family of four girls who have just lost their mother to cancer and whose brother has run away. The backdrop of the narrative is the famous murder that also inspired Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, although voice is only given to the murdered girl through letters she gave to Mattie and asked to burn. An overarching theme of the novel is the denial of this dead girl’s voice, the loss of her story through murder, and the impact this has on Mattie’s own life decisions. Mattie must decide between fulfilling her dying mother’s plea that she care for her little sisters, marrying the handsome young farmer, and accepting life forever in Herkimer County or going off alone to NYC in order to go to college.tI also enjoyed this novel so much because all of the characters are fully realized and authentic. Mattie has two best friends, Weaver, the only black boy in the entire county and who also has a scholarship for college and Minnie, who has just married and is now pregnant. She also has a new teacher, Miss Wilcox, who supports Mattie’s writing with intensity, and has dark secrets of her own. What is wonderful about these characters is that they are not just props, they have their own conflicts and their own fears that Donnelly explores through the eyes of Mattie. Each of Mattie’s sisters has a personality that comes off the page; and her father is one of the strongest characters in the story. Every individual Mattie comes into contact with is a real person, and it makes the novel so much more meaningful.tEven Mattie’s mother, who has died before the story begins, is given detail and life – she is not just a source of sadness or a plot device. One of my most favorite moments is when Mattie describes a special ritual just the two of them shared: "Sometimes she would pick a basketful of berries in the afternoon and set them, sun-warmed and fragrant, on the kitchen table, along with a dish of fresh cream and one of maple sugar. We would dip them first into the cream, then in the sugar, and then bite into them greedily. Somehow, they always tasted of more than themselves. They tasted like my pa whistling as he came in from the fields at night, or like a new calf getting to its feet for the first time, or like Lawton telling us ghost stories around the fire. I think that what they tasted of was happiness." (301)tI just love the idea of tasting happiness, what could be lovelier?
—Heather
