The Invention of Wings
Sue Monk Kidd
Penguin Books
2014
Ms. Hen decided to read this because she picked it up at a Little Free Library near where she lives. She had read THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES by the same author years ago, and she remembers liking it. She wishes she felt the same way about this novel.
This novel is about two women, Sarah Grimke, and Hetty "Handful" Grimke who live in Charleston, South Carolina in the early nineteenth century. Handful is a slave, and is given to Sarah on her eleventh birthday, but Sarah does not want her, and tries to set her free, but she can't because her parents won't allow it. She teaches Handful how to read, which is illegal at the time, and their lives intertwine. Sarah makes a promise to Handful's mother, Charlotte, that she will help Handful become free one day.
Ms. Hen wanted to like this novel, but she found it tiresome. She found that she could not read the book for a long time. The word that came to her mind to describe this is "schmaltzy," which Ms. Hen did not know the exact meaning of, but she looked it up. The meaning is "excessively sentimental, in music or art," which is from Yiddish. Ms. Hen does not know how these words get into her head sometimes, but that is how she would describe this novel. It's a little too nice for what it is. She thinks that the people in real life in this era would not act this way, even though this novel is based on actual characters, Ms. Hen thinks it's too schmaltzy to be realistic.
Ms. Hen finds it difficult to acquire books these days. She does not work close to the library anymore, so she must depend on buying books online, and the Little Free Libraries. She gets frustrated because she reads so much she thinks she can't afford to buy all the books she wants, but she can afford it actually, but buying books takes a lot of space in her house. She wants to read books that make her happy and are interesting, not schmaltzy books that make her bored.
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