March 2022 books

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book reminded me a lot of Station Eleven - it has a complex plot that jumps around in time and centers on an enigmatic text that ties the various plot threads together. It also reminded me of Station Eleven in that I really loved reading it...but was left afterward wondering what all that was for, exactly. But it's a GREAT story, told very compellingly, and I stayed up late to finish it!

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Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was looking forward to this book so much but it didn't meet my (admittedly high) expectations! I was bothered by three things. First, the setting wasn't described richly enough. It was basically like, "y'know, 19th-century Scotland! That kind of stuff!" Second, I felt like Bernard was just unreasonably cruel. The story would have been far more compelling if he had been even slightly a good guy. And third, I'm sorry, but it was so unrealistic! Parts of it were meant to be that way, and I don't have any issues with those. But we're supposed to believe this SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD just...lives alone in a castle and turns it into a hospital and is going to be a Real Doctor and oh yeah also she's going to CURE THE ROMAN FEVER. I am all for gutsy heroines but yeesh, dial it back a little.

Still, if you just want a gothic romp through 19th-century Scotland (whatever that means to you), then this might be just the book for you!

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The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Third-ish reading March 2022.

This is my second time reading this book since being a grown-up and my first time reading this book since having children. I read it specifically in preparation for a trip to Amsterdam, because we were going to be visiting the Secret Annex.

I'm really glad I read it (and The Betrayal of Anne Frank) before our visit, but let me tell you, I will NEVER read this book again. Never. After reading just a few pages last week, I knew it was going to be rough. I don't know what made me think that I, a mother of two daughters aged exactly the same as Margot and Anne, could handle this book but it was a terrible experience reading it and then a terrible experience going to the annex and seeing where it was written.

Part of the reason it was so much more heartbreaking to read as an adult - especially in a month where I packed a go bag and acquired potassium iodide pills - was that through what Anne says about her experience, you can pick up on what her parents were experiencing. And that was terrifying to hear about. Reading between the lines, you can almost reconstruct the conversations Otto Frank must have been having with his wife, helpers, and co-residents of the annex, and the stress of it all must have been almost unbearable. Also reading between the lines, you can sense how Anne's parents tried to make it easier and lighter for the children, even though the whole situation was anything but. Over the last few weeks, we've had to have several difficult conversations with the kids about what to do in this or that emergency situation, and what's going on with our neighbor across the border, and it is SO HARD as a parent to walk the tightrope between informing your kids and terrifying your kids. And that's why reading this book, right now, at this life stage, with these events going on...it was just too much.

When we went to Amsterdam, Magdalena and I took a tram to Anne Frank's old house that they moved to when they fled Germany. Then we walked the 4km or so to the secret annex, just as Anne and her family did early one morning in the summer of 1942. Thirteen-year-old Magdalena asked if we could take the route that went along the nearby canal and I said sure, of course! And in that moment I realized that 13-year-old Anne could very well have asked her parents the same thing. I could almost HEAR it. And it broke me.

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