Welcome to Litsy!

My first day in Ireland was spent in Ennis where I wandered into a small used bookstore and asked the employee (or owner) for a book specific to Ireland history and he found Nell. We then spoke about how much we liked Williams‘ book This is Happiness. He went to the back rooms to find History of the Rain because it was his favorite but he didn‘t have it. So I came away with these two books and a smile on my face.

I had high expectations for this book because I loved History of the Rain. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a so-so for me. The synopsis is intriguing: a man loses his wife and daughter in a car crash and mourns them until he is dying himself and decides he can‘t without taking care of the happiness of his other, neglected, child, now a grown-up. The story itself does not rise above the mediocre though. It is a love story like many others.

In the weeks following the funeral of his wife and daughter he scoured the burnt bottom of his soul for the myriad failings of his love - the days he had said nothing, had returned from work with some bitterness and left the children doing their homework, raising his newspaper like a drawbridge... #quotsynov17 #death #litsyquotechallenge #quotsy

'So, as one game followed the next, the movement of the chess pieces was the ancient vocabulary through which Stephen began to tell his father that he was daring to believe in love. All of his moves signalled it; his knights flew into the midst of the board, his bishops ventured criss-cross along diagonals that bespoke the innocence of a beginner, or the blind invulnerability of dreams. Stephen moved his queen constantly...' #litsyonereviewwonder

Day10 of #augustofpages A gentle story of love. The love of a father for his son in spite of the grief of losing his wife & daughter. And the love of the son for an unattainable Italian musician which he struggles to express. Beautifully told. "Philip Griffin had loved Anne with his life; he had loved her so entirely with himself that when she died there was little left of him, only the corner he had kept alive for his son." #bookphotochallenge

So, as one game followed the next, the movement of the chess pieces was an ancient vocabulary through which Stephen began to tell his father that he was daring to believe in love. All of his moves signalled it; his Knights flew into the midst of the board, his bishops ventured criss-cross...