I loved Full Harvest. Couldn't wait to get my Binah every Monday morn and check out Gella. However, I tried to push myself to read this new serial, but I honestly lost patience. Waiting for the next one.....
I loved Full Harvest. Couldn't wait to get my Binah every Monday morn and check out Gella. However, I tried to push myself to read this new serial, but I honestly lost patience. Waiting for the next one.....
Don't give up on it - read it when it comes out as a book. I read Full Harvest in fits and starts when it was serialized and really didn't get it, but loved it as a book.
Just to second the motion here, I'm a huge fan of her writing style. She was the first time I ever understood peoples complaints about Jewish writing. Her style, vocabulary...just about everything, is head and shoulders above any other Jewish novel I have ever read. And not to brag, but I"m a huge reader, so that's saying a lot.
I can't wait to see how the story develops.
No one here seems to recall that the opening scene was in fact, the end.
And I remember thinking that although it obviously didn't make sense to me, it seemed very dark. Like with no one being happy. I think Caro was holding someone who was dying...I remember this distinctly because I was wondering if Caro was a girl or boy
Someone help me out here.
Don't Mose and Wolf remind you of Rosie and Gella?
One uptight and the other endlessly cheerful?
No, ttly not.
Wolf is way funnier than Gella. She's just cheerful. Its dif. Plus he has this meanish teasing/mischevious streak that is so un-Gella like.
And Rosie is much more of a sulker, like a powder keg ready to explode at any minute.
Mose is more of a morose, brooding kind of character who is naturally that way, not just acting like it cuz of the circumstances. and hes so serious, for goodness sake. Rosie at least has a sense of humor.
Wolf is a six/seven with a splash of three and Gella's a two/three with a bit of seven
Rosies a complete four. and mose? a 1 most likely.
thats just my take anyway
Scotty, I don't know if you are still on imamother, but I have to compliment this week's installment. I nearly laughed out loud. In addition, I really enjoy how the issues of the times are so well portrayed by your characters.
ttly getting btr by the wk! Id like to think it was our little feedback here but its probably how you planned it all along... and yes I remember that scene but does that mean Caro and Mose were not on speaking terms??
maybe because of Caros developing relationship with Wolf?
or am I ttly missing the boat here?
THANK YOU everyone for all your commentary and feedback! O fun fun fun! (Good thing I'm too lazy to play around with the italics coding or I'd go all Caro here. The 1860s are growing on me italics-wise.)
for anyone interested in the Prologue/teaser:
Hidden:
The End
The ballroom was like a fever dream, a beguiling whirl of gaiety and silk. A thousand tapers blazed brilliantly in the chandeliers, making diamonds of the slivered ice chips and glinting silver. Profusions of flowers perfumed the air with scent.
It was good to be here. He straightened his frock coat with the briefest of tugs, and looked out upon the milling assemblage with pleasure. Despite it being the height of the social season he felt suddenly as though he had not attended a proper party in months, and entered the festivities with more alacrity than was his wont.
He had only just hailed Geoffrey Hunt when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a familiar figure beside a column. Turning, he saw her fully, and drew breath with a sharp inhale.
Caro. Caro… looking perfectly ghastly in a sober cotton day dress amidst the wheeling crowd of lace and taffeta, her hair dusty and dull, features drawn, and was that a smear of blood on her cheek? He stared at the apparition with horror.
“Are you,” he stammered, trying not to stare openly, “Are you quite all right?”
A strange look flitted over her features for the briefest of moments. “Yes, thank you,” she said, and even her voice had changed since he had seen her last. It was rougher, now, with a curiously flat quality to it. “And you?”
“Never better,” he said, and meant it.
She closed her eyes for a moment, a strange reaction, and he began to worry if perhaps she was ill. He had just opened his mouth when she opened her eyes, fixing him in her stare.
“I am sorry,” she said, and now she was looking upon him with even stranger pity, and something very much like sadness. “I am so very, very sorry, but this is the end.”
“The end of what?” he had time to ask, and then everything went dark.
****
“Well, he’s fainted at least, which is a small comfort,” the other woman sighed, looking over Caro’s way. “Leave him be, child. Sleep is the Lord’s own medicine.”
Caro exhaled, slowly, closing her eyes for a selfish moment. “Indeed.”
She rose ungracefully from beside the mud-crusted blanket where the young man lay, and looked down at his face for one last moment. The blood was shocking against the pallor of his face, a macabre speckling that shrouded his natural freckles; beginnings of a beard tufted from his jaw, matted with mud. She tried to remember him as he had been, in the life that had been before, and found that she could not.
“It may not be the end yet,” the older woman said kindly. “It’s at but the beginning. He might well make it yet.”
Caro was still. “I know,” she said. She bent down halfway to the young man at he feet, her voice pitying and desperate and nearly fierce. “Hear that? A beginning.”
But he was long past answering.
And--
A teeny-tiny word to the wise, from Ch. 2:
Hidden:
Endings are begun, Beginnings are ended, and the Means to the Ends and the End to Meaning are begun.
Or, in other words, remember your salt when digesting...
Seriously, folks, thanks for sharing. Love to hear your thoughts. And yes, it was your feedback that got the dramatis personae in there -- Binah, at your service, interactive mag par excellence (and would you like a side of fries with that?)
AHhhhh!!! totally dying of curiousity now but thanks muchly for putting that in Scotty. I remember reading that a couple of times because of its gorgeous writing...
cant wait till Caros mom disowns her for wanting to marry Wolf
but what is that scene about???? argggg the annoyance of serials!!!
whoa. I LOVE the writing Scotty and thanks to you and to phillymom for reminding us of the prologue. My curiosity is really piqued! I can hardly wait for the next installment.
and yes I remember that scene but does that mean Caro and Mose were not on speaking terms??
