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Lillian and Madison were unlikely, yet inseparable friends at their boarding school. Then Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly in the wake of a scandal, and they have barely spoken since. Years later, Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help. Madison's twin stepkids are moving in, and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there's a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it's the truth. Thinking of the life that has consistently disappointed her, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other while also staying out of the way of Madison's uptight husband. Surprised by her intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her. Could this be the start of the amazing life she'd always hoped for?… (mer)
haven’t stopped thinking about this since i read it 4 months ago i love how tender and heartfelt the writing is i love thé realistic story with the aspect of the fire kids being just a slightly off take from reality ( )
Come for the gimmick, stay for one touching, and one puzzling, relationship. The gimmick of course is the children who periodically burst into flame, which doesn't do them any harm. The story doesn't try to explain how this could be, making it magical realism instead of science fiction. Also making it explainable as a mere metaphor for how children can be difficult. What, children can be difficult? It's true!
The puzzling relationship is between Madison, the two children's step-mother, and Lillian, her roommate for half a year of ninth grade at an elite boarding school. Madison is beautiful and was raised to be at home with power and wealth, and is now married to the kids' father, an important Senator, but has trouble forming relationships and has no real friends. Except Lillian? Lillian was a scholarship kid at the school before being expelled, taking the fall for Madison's actions after Madison's arrogant father wrote Lillian's uncaring mother a large check, sending Lillian back to a life of poor schools and dead end jobs. This relationship has all sorts of subtexts - a massive and uncomfortable power imbalance, hidden and repressed sexuality, dysfunctional families, thwarted ambitions.
The touching relationship is between these kids and Lillian. The children's mother, a paranoid recluse, has killed herself and tried to kill them as well. Their father, the Senator, has no feeling for them and wants them to be hidden away. They catch on fire. Safe to say, they've got some issues. Madison asks Lillian to leave behind her barely functional life to care for them in a guesthouse on their massive estate. It shouldn't work out but it does, and the kids and Lillian find love and redemption in each other. And it's actually written pretty well.
There's less done with the flammable aspect of the children than I was expecting, so I got a different book than I thought I was about to read, but it's an entertaining and solid read. ( )
You can’t beat a serendipitous 5 star charity shop purchase from an author you’ve never heard of. (The fact it was only published last year and in pristine condition adding to its appeal) Despite this, I ummed and ahhed a little before buying it, yet buy it I did and furthermore started reading it straight away - swiftly finding out I had struck the aforementioned gold ( )
This book was a sometimes darkly funny, sometimes horrifying, quirky, and sweet story about misfits, young and old, based on a strange premise: children with some genetic condition that causes them to combust when agitated, and even at will as they grow older. Stranger still is the fact they themselves are not hurt by the flames emanating from them, but the flames nevertheless ignite objects or burn people they touch. Ten-year-old twins Bessie and Roland Roberts have plenty of reason to be agitated: When they were five, they and their mother were discarded by their father, Senator Roberts, when he found a new wife, Madison - who worked miracles on his campaign. Then after their mother's death, the Senator, who is on a short list to be the next Secretary of State, needs to take them back and wants to keep them out of the spotlight so they don't damage his prospects. Madison decides to hire a governess - her best friend from boarding school, Lillian, who had taken the fall for Madison, vis-a-vis a handsome payoff to her mother, and gotten expelled yet remained loyal via correspondence in the years since. The Senator is a complete asshole; Madison is somewhat more redemptive; and Lillian really shines in the end. I found Lillian's character a little unbelievable - she seemed more male than female - but nevertheless the story was entertaining. ( )
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta.Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
For Ann Patchett and Julie Barer
Inledande ord
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta.Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
In the late spring of 1995, just a few weeks after I'd turned twenty-eight, I got a letter from my friend Madison Roberts.
Citat
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta.Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
It was the hard thing about having two jobs: you had to disappoint them at different times and sometimes you lost track of who you'd fucked over worse.
I wasn't destined for greatness; I knew this. But I was figuring out how to steal it from someone stupid enough to relax their grip on it.
She flipped her hair in such a way that it could only have been instinctual, evolution.
"Because you're poor, right? But you're here. You want power, too." "I just want to go to college, to get out of here," I said, but I felt like maybe she was right. I'd learn to want all that stuff she said. I could go for power. "I think we'll be friends," she said. "I hope so, at least." "God," I said, trying to keep my whole body from convulsing, "I hope so, too."
It was such a strange feeling, to hate someone and yet love them at the same time.
Everything was so easy, and nobody cared, and I lost interest. I started working after school, helping my mom clean houses. I started hanging out with idiot boys and girls who had access to weed and pills, and I'd stay with them as long as they didn't expect anything from me. Then, when they did expect things, I just bought weed myself and smoked joints on the back porch of my house all alone, feeling the world flatten out. I started to care less about the future. I cared more about making the present tolerable. And time passed. And that was my life.
I reminded myself to be smarter. I was smart. I just had a thick layer of stupid that had settled on top of me.
I had been prepared for wealth, but clearly my life had left me ill prepared for what wealth could be.
And like that, it was the two of us again, me being weird and her revealing that, by god, she was weird, too.
I couldn't tell if it was love, but I also knew that I was no real judge of love, having never experienced it or even witnessed it a single time in my life.
"She's always been good to you for some reason," she said, like she was dumbfounded by unnecessary kindness.
A lot of times when I think I'm being self-sufficient, I'm really just learning to live without the things that I need.
I felt like some mermaid who had suddenly grown legs and was now living among the humans.
My mom looked at me with this strange expression, and now, thinking back, I feel like this was the exact moment when she realized that I wasn't her, that I was a mystery to her and maybe always would be.
I loved how expertly bitchy she was; I wanted to study her for a year.
I didn't feel anything like Mary Poppins, that bitch. I needed a prop, some magic umbrella that played music or something.
He had stripes buzzed into the sides of his hair, and I was shocked to realize that their hair was unsinged. I don't know why, with these demon children bursting into flames right in front of me, their bad haircuts remaining intact was the magic that fully amazed me, but that's how it works, I think. The big thing is so ridiculous that you absorb only the smaller miracles.
Timothy was already there, his hands clasped together on the table like he was ready to pray or like he was your boss and was really sorry but he was going to have to fire you.
The kids weren't on fire. That was my new measuring stick for what was good and what was bad.
"Do you think Madison likes us?" she asked. I knew how she was feeling, the need to have Madison look at you, direct that sunlight your way.
And I knew a secret to caring for someone, had learned it just this moment. You took care of people by not letting them know how badly you wanted your life to be different.
"No fucking way," Madison repeated, and she looked amazing. She shined with a kind of ferocity that you couldn't teach, that you had to be born with.
The kids had been so quiet, probably traumatized, but there was nothing I could do about that now. Setting your childhood home on fire, that seemed like some symbolically heavy shit.
Avslutande ord
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta.Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
It was this little fire. And I would hold on to it. And it would keep me warm. And it would never, ever go out.
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▾Bokbeskrivningar
Lillian and Madison were unlikely, yet inseparable friends at their boarding school. Then Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly in the wake of a scandal, and they have barely spoken since. Years later, Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help. Madison's twin stepkids are moving in, and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there's a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it's the truth. Thinking of the life that has consistently disappointed her, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other while also staying out of the way of Madison's uptight husband. Surprised by her intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her. Could this be the start of the amazing life she'd always hoped for?
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i love how tender and heartfelt the writing is
i love thé realistic story with the aspect of the fire kids being just a slightly off take from reality (