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Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen (view source)
Revision as of 13:16, 24 November 2013
, 13:16, 24 November 2013no edit summary
I first encountered Anna Quindlen when I read [[Life with Beau: A Tale of a Dog and His Family by Anna Quindlen|Life with Beau: A Tale of a Dog and His Family]]. I'm a sucker for non-fiction books about dogs but what struck me was that the book could have been trite. Instead it was elegant, witty and with a real eye for detail and social nuance. It was genuinely about life ''with'' Beau and what the family learned from him rather than - as so many such books are - what the family had done for the dog. The book struck a particular chord with me as our older dog was, we knew, on borrowed time (although her innate stubbornness kept her going for another two years) and Quindlen helped me to think about what Rosie had given us.
And now she's done it again. In ''Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake'' Quindlen looks at her life, the events and people who have shaped it and acknowledges that she is becoming old, even if she doesn't wish to embrace the word quite yet. (I consider myself 'upper middle-aged' and see no reason to budge.) She sums up what the book is about far better than I can:
''It's odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn't know who I was. Then I invented someone, and became her. Then I began to like what I'd invented. And finally I was what I was again.'''