I feel that there’s an attempt to do philosophy here, though I’m not sure that that is it. It doesn’t feel philosophic, though. Anyway, the contemplation thoughts feel fake, aren’t sincere, as if they were put just to give impression of depth in the book. The effort fails. There’s no emotion in it, so I didn’t get the feeling that it’s really from Merle. The same also with her falling in love. I didn’t feel anything through the process, and suddenly her lost self and ability to love is found and revived? The narration on that just doesn’t fit. So here she meets a handsome guy to whom she seems not to speak much, around whom she doesn’t seem to feel comfortable even-though she thinks she does, and one morning she opens her eyes and knows that she wants to go away with him and maybe have a taste of love for the first time. Everything about that just feels contradicted and forced. And Merle herself doesn’t feel real as the main character. I as a reader didn’t feel the bond with her. At some point I felt that her characteristics were rather inconsistent. I got impression that she’s a serious woman—which she is, I could see from her thoughts and actions—who isn’t too interested in littlest trifles if life, like a man’s cuteness; but turns out that she is, in a way a light-hearted twenty-something would be, to Pascal’s. When she thinks he’s cute, it just doesn’t fit her characteristics. Added with her vanity and distance as seen in her view towards life, Merle isn’t a lovable character, though at the lighter side, she isn’t a dumb and offensive character, either. In France things are different after the death of her husband Harry, she and her son Tristan find a lot of secrets harry had kept to himself. Like another wife and girl child.They thought they might be rich from all his dealings and money marketing but finds out he squandered it all. all he left them was a run down home in france. There she finds herself and fixes up the home to sell but decides to keep it.
What do You think about Blackbird Fly (2009)?
Interesting mystery, with a realistic element of middle age awakening thrown in.
—lolp11
I really enjoyed this book. it kept me interested until the end.
—razan
