This book should be read without the presentiment that the heroine is going to be heroic, selfless, lovely, or even pleasant.To judge the book based on that is to completely miss the point of this novel.No, Sara Louise isn't a pleasant heroine. She is eaten up with neglect, bitterness, jealousy, and it's difficult to tell whether she has more self-loathing or loathing for anything or anyone who isn't herself, at least for childhood through adolescence.With that said, it is vitally important that this book exist. I can't think of a single book I had throughout school that had such a heroine or hero, and which carried such a message or perspective. No, the books were about the Carolines--people who were pretty and/or talented, so very different and special, meant for so much more, and by work they eventually earn their happy endings. And in those books, the Wheezes maybe got some redemptive character arc that is meant only to support the primary heroine's character arc from struggle to triumph.And since I just finished an entire novel from the perspective of the lesser sister, that disgusts me. Don't get me wrong--there was not a single moment reading this novel where I was not acknowledging the fact that the image I was given through Sara Louise's eyes had a greater slant than your average flying buttress. However. That is important. It is important that we not fetishize the "outcast" in our literature--and let's be perfectly honest, how the hell many books exist that tell us "It's good, preferable to be weird, to be the outcast, to be strange and unlike anyone else." Except that's hard, lonely, isolating, and the normal populace will always still choose the Carolines over the Wheezes among us.Which brings us to question the heroine's value. Where is she being Sara Louise, the heroine we wish to see redeemed on a cold night, wondering as she wanders, and where is she Wheeze, so eaten up with hatred of her own sister and mother and everyone else that she will destroy her lotion and scream that she doesn't want to go to the boarding school she'd been saving and saving for just because she wants to be alone when she really doesn't? It's complicated, and that's the value: being a girl is complicated, self-loathing is complicated, and trying to love yourself and your family is complicated.There aren't perfect characters in this novel. Wheeze is a chore, but you are a liar if you say you didn't think Grandma was a bitch. You're also a liar if you didn't feel at least a tiny bit of sympathy for her when Louise did.I was assigned this book as an English Education major in a class on Adolescent Lit, looking forward to novels and classes. This is a great novel for paying attention to perspective. This is a great novel for looking at the value of a novel even when the main character isn't "pleasant," because not every main character is meant to be pleasant.I'd reccommend this book to anyone with the ability to process that novels with unpleasant characters can still be fantastic novels, filled with well-crafted characters.
This book embarrassed me a little. It embarrassed me more than a little. I'm no stranger to self pity and talking myself into not doing things.It is also embarrassing because it is cloying and whiney.Louise (nicknamed Wheeze) slumps in the shadowed footsteps of her twin sister, Caroline. Caroline is very clever. Wheeze is not a sexy nickname. She totally eliminated the competition with that strategic strategy. The fam and Caroline, as well as their whole island, love everything about Caroline, anyway. You know those soap opera actresses who do something evil? And they grin evilly over the shoulder of the hot guy shoulder they are crying on? As the good girl looks on helplessly? Louise does the dirty work to put food on the table (crab fishing, mostly). I get that the family were awful. Her best (only) friend (if anyone didn't see him falling for Caroline coming dead end roads off, they weren't paying attention to the whole premise of Caroline > Louise), Call, doesn't seem to really like her either. It's all very depressing. And weird. She develops a crush on a man older than her grandmother! (The grandmother is the biggest beyotch in the book.) The methodist stuff was heaped on way too much for my tastes (not that it was methodist. Just the goody two shoes religious-y aspect. It's just that "Methodist!" was name dropped an awful lot). So it's depressing and weird and... She was soooooo whiney. The "You don't need people to hand stuff to you" message was tacked on. Louise didn't exhibit any spunk. I didn't believe that much that she stops letting her family belittle her to keep her on as their caretaker for life coming out of nowhere. More, please. She also becomes a doctor and finds a husband (with three kids) pretty damned instantly. After tons and tons of whining. There should have been a fairer ratio, I say.Caroline was never anything but a figure of in the distance perfectness and tongue wagging. This was supposed to be a twin book! What the hell gives?Why did I write a whole review for? I should've just said "A really bad episode of Avonlea but told from the perspective of the evil twin instead of the spunky little girl who gets the old twin with a man and out of the thumb of the bitter spinster twin."Annoyingly quaint.P.s. I forgot to mention the freaking weird hand lotion incident! What the fuck was that?P.s.s. I pictured the beloved captain to look like THIS.
What do You think about Jacob Have I Loved (2003)?
I highly recommend this book to teen girls and their parents. The central girl is foiled at every turn in her life by lack of money, lack of parental support, lack of beauty... and also by her overbearing and truly gifted sister. When she connects with her grandmother, listens to her and learns to let go of all these restrictions, to let go of any resentment, frustration or bitterness and to get out and do what she needs to do to live her own life, she does! She finds peace, happiness and eventually a love of her own not through any fairytale romance or knight on a white horse, but through searching out the path best for her and then working with dedication. I do not intend to make parents think they need to learn a lesson about parenting from the book, rather, it would just be a lovely story to be able to talk about with your daughter.
—Erin Casey
I remember loving this book as a kid, so I picked it up the other day. I'm not exactly sure why I liked it so much, because this time around I didn't find it nearly entertaining. Also I didn't feel sorry for Louise this time around; most everything Caroline got that Louise didn't was due to Louise's inability to speak up, or because her attempts to get something for herself completely backfired due to her passive-aggressive ways of doing so.Also, I must say, I got a little wigged out when she hugged the Captain and that incident began her sexual awakening. I mean, what?I also thought it was interesting that religion was shown to make Louise pretty miserable but there was never any follow-up on that. I suppose this wasn't the sort of vehicle for any sort of anti-religious or anti-god agenda, but it really upset me to see someone so tortured by words from the bible and then have no conclusion to mark those words as, ya know, something besides a "curse from god". Maybe that's why I used to like this book; back in seventh grade I was in Catholic school.
—laaaaames
Jacob Have I Loved, winner of the 1981 Newberry Award, explores themes of sibling rivalry, jealousy, and being torn between desire and duty. All her life, Sara Louise has been overshadowed by her prettier, talented twin sister Caroline who calls her the distasteful nickname “Wheeze”. Caroline’s singing voice allows for a life filled with opportunities, but what can Louise do other than help with crabbing and oyster fishing? When a mysterious sea captain comes to the island, Sara Louise hopes that he will have some answer to filling the lonely, envious void that has occupied her soul for so long. Little does Louise know that only she holds the key to her own happiness. Set in the lush scenery of 1940s New England, Katherine Peterson has created relatable characters that grow, just as real people do, throughout the story.
—Talia
