Here we go again, I love Kat’s blog prompts! Today I have chosen…….
1.) Grab your current read. Let the book fall open to a random page and share two “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
“That’s why women with long legs and dyed hair, the bottle blondes of this world, travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to be in Cannes, even if only to spend the whole day on the beach, hoping to be seen, photographed, discovered. They want to escape from the trap that awaits all women: becoming a housewife, who makes supper for her husband every evening, takes the children to school every day and tries to dig up some dirt on her neighbours’ monotonous lives so as to have something to gossip about with her friends.”
I swear that was a random selection! A very poignant selection nonetheless considering that probably the only people who will read this will be a handful of ‘mommy-bloggers’ (like myself), so who’s going to be the first to get fired up about Coelho’s sweeping generalization? Or is he right?
Lets see how I fit the bill:
- It’s 8.30pm I am in bed. It’s too cold to be anywhere else when hubby is away and there is nothing on TV (no we don’t have a TV in the bedroom)
- I am wearing flannel PJ’s with sheep on them. See above IT’S COLD….and I live in NZ people!
- I wore no make-up today :::gasp::: I know, I hear ya. It was wasn’t pretty but hey kiddo was home marginally ill again and we live on a farm and I am not The Pioneer Women. Ethan tells me I’m beautiful anyway and I tell myself that surely this counts for something right?
- I am sending kiddo to kindy tomorrow no matter what because if I have to endure another full day of Mr 4.5yo Perfectionist’s crying over everything he does that is less than worthy of hanging in MOMA I’m not sure all the happy pills in the world will be able to save me.
- I talk about my kid WAY too much.
So well, hmmm looks like I am definitely a housewife. But trapped? I have never thought about it that way (not since the days of breastfeeding when I was literally trapped and my life was segmented into the TWO HOURLY feeding cycle – yes it is true and it lasted one year!). All I can say is that we all have choices and claiming entrapment doesn’t really cut it if the only things tying you down are your apron strings.
So, do I like this book? Yes, the reviews of it are shit, but I love Coelho’s writing. This book rationalizes the behaviour of each nutbar character in a very comprehensive and compelling way. Can I put it down? Yes. It’s not as good as last months read ‘Our Lady of the Forest’, which I loved and highly recommend. Unless you are a Coelho collecter I would say get this one from the library rather than buy it.
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