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Laddar... The Loversav Vendela Vida
   Ingen/inga Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken.  luzdelsol | Jul 31, 2020 |    ) oldblack | Jul 14, 2019 |  ) Eoin | Jun 3, 2019 | "…she had come to Datça to strip herself of these lies, to shed this grief. The grief and the lies were the same - one begot the other.” She finds that the small town of Datça had deteriorated, analogous to the way her marriage had. Much of the conflict between Yvonne and Peter was over their twins, Matthew and Aurelia. Matthew was “perfect” and the one on whom Peter bestowed his favor. Aurelia was damaged, subject to alcohol and drug addiction, and Peter seemed to blame Yvonne. Even when the children grew up and left the house, “they had grown so accustomed to resenting each other that they didn’t know how to stop.” In Turkey Yvonne encounters some rather eccentric people, such as the estranged wife Özlem of her proprietor; a local boy Ahmet who sells seashells to her; Ahmet’s sister; and another vacationing American couple. All of them serve to give insights about herself to Yvonne. Eventually, Yvonne gets some answers about her life, but they weren’t answers to the questions she came with; she had been blinded all along by the wrong questions. Discussion: This is a short novel, with spare but well-crafted writing. The primary theme seems to be the way in which we define ourselves through our relationships, and how these ideas of who we are and who the others are in our lives may get embedded in old patterns - almost like those paperweights of insects stuck in amber, that then go on to hold down our growth in the same fixed and stuck way. In addition, these definitions affect the evaluations of us by others; how does one escape such enmeshment? In the biggest metaphor of the book, an owl, bereft of its mate (owls are monogamous), becomes trapped in the house which Yvonne is renting. The owl eventually gets loose; whether Yvonne does too remains to be seen. Evaluation: This is a thought-provoking meditation on sense of self and the importance of relationships to one’s identity. The characters struck me as rather odd though; I didn't really warm up to them. Moreover, some of the plot developments are sort of enigmatic and/or get dropped. In addition, I found the ending to be a bit improbable. Nevertheless, I would recommend it for a book club, because it would definitely generate discussion. (  ) nbmars | Oct 15, 2015 | ) brangwinn | Aug 7, 2015 |
 A middle-aged widow returns to the Turkish seaside town where she and her husband honeymooned twenty-eight years before, only to find the place gone to seed, haunted by sunburned Germans and mangy cats. At every turn, she is ambushed by evidence of other people's love, or lust, anyway. The owner of her rented villa has neglected to stow his sex swing or a naked photograph of his girlfriend; later, his estranged wife appears and too quickly divulges the secrets of their marriage. In a definitively bleak detail, even a spoon from the local ice-cream parlor tastes of "a century of tongues." Vida has made a specialty of lives in abeyance--this is her third novel in which a woman goes abroad in search of herself--and for much of the book her heroine simply drifts. It feels jarring, then, when, near the end, something happens and her character hurtles toward epiphany.  Yvonne, a Vermont schoolteacher whose husband was killed by a heedless driver, makes a pilgrimage back to the Turkish seaside town where they honeymooned. But her journey and her judgment are distorted by grief. She rents a house that comes with an intrusive cast of characters and cultivates a lad who isn't the waif she imagined. Quietly provocative, The Lovers explores the perils of self-involvement and the ease with which we destroy one another's lives.  In Vida's third novel, a middle-aged woman, grieving over the death of her husband, returns to the village in Turkey where they honeymooned. Yvonne, both dignified and terrifically vulnerable, makes for a moving companion throughout this dreamy story of reawakening. Vida has a cinematic flair for storytelling. Of the desiccated town to which Yvonne returns, she writes, "It had been looted by tide and tourists and the scalding sun that robbed boats of their color." The character wrestles with her many identities--widow, woman, teacher, mother--as she struggles to see herself with clarity. It's a novel that demands a movie version starring Meryl Streep. A− Is it wise to return to the scene of your honeymoon after the sudden death of your spouse? That's what Yvonne, a seemingly sensible history teacher, decides to do in Vida's polished and unnerving third novel. Founding coeditor of the Believer, winner of the Kate Chopin Writing Award, and coauthor of the screenplay for Away We Go (2009), Vida has created a brilliant, topsy-turvy, twenty-first-century variation on E. M. Forster's Passage to India. Dodging her adult children, the mismatched twins glossy Matthew and rehab-veteran Aurelia, Yvonne, in deep shock, rents a fancy house on the coast of Turkey built by the landlord for his mistress. Yvonne is befriended by Ozlem, the landlord's aggressively inquisitive ex-wife, and becomes attached to Ahmet, a boy who collects and sells seashells. As she tries to adjust to widowhood while navigating perplexing social situations and painful memories, things go disastrously wrong. Vida creates an atmosphere at once molten and chilling as she deftly exposes the wounding reverberations of timeless conflicts between men and women, parents and children, East and West, appearance and truth. An elegant consideration of how death and distance tightens human connections--a big theme that Vida addresses with sure-footedness and charm. Prestigefyllda urval
Yvonne, a recently widowed American mother of two grown children, returns to Datça, Turkey, to relive memories of a happier time, but instead is troubled by her past and finds solace in her friendship with Ahmet, a young local boy. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
Pågående diskussionerIngen/ingaPopulära omslag
 Google Books — Laddar...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyKlassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg: (3.35)
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"I guess that's true," Yvonne said, trying to decide if it was. (pg. 37)
Vida seems like she's written this book trying to decide if the above quote is true. Something both does and does not happen so I'm not sure where her stance lands. The love story in this is kind of whimsical which I liked. It would be a good quick read for a day at the beach as I flew through it and it also happens to be beach related! As a woman who does often travel alone I liked hearing about Yvonne's experience. Some lovely descriptions of Turkey, a pretty solid voice for the main character but the other characters fall flat and the story has a bit of a lull in the middle.
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