Forever in Blue - Ann Brashares

Forever in Blue, was, for me not the best of the 'Sisterhood' books. I didn't really like the story for any of the girls. 

Lena moves on emotionally from Kostos and while this is, in theory at least, a good thing you can't help but think 'No No No, they have to make it work somehow'. Then just as you come to terms with the fact that Lena is over him, he turns up with the astounding news that he divorced his wife because she lied to him and was never really pregnant. This comes just as you think Lena has sorted herself out and he throws her back into turmoil, the only good thing about this train is that by the end of the book Lena has at least come to terms with everything and is able to move on.

Tibby finds herself in the middle of a pregnancy scare and  pushes away nearly everyone who cares about her, including Brian, who cares about her more than anything. When she tells him she wants to end it and effectively grants Effie free reign to be with him she's devastated. She becomes self-absorbed and can't see the irony of her own actions as jealousy rears it's ugly head. Once again there is only one good thing about this story thread which is that when Brian and Tibby reunite at least it mollifies some of the guilt you feel at Brian having his heart broken. 

Bridget, I don't even know what happened with Bridget. She is in a happy, stable and thriving relationship with her first and only love and yet she goes to another country and while there kisses a married man. This for me sums up the craziness of this book compared with the others. 

Meanwhile Carmen you just wouldn't recognise, it's like she had a personality transplant. After one year without her friends she is no longer outgoing and bubbly, but shy and introverted. It's ironic considering they all went to different schools so it's not actually like she's never had to make friends before.

As you may be able to tell I didn't really like this book. Personally I think that Ann Brashares would have been better to have left the story at Book Three and just rounded off Lena's story a little better. The sisterhood didn't work once they were apart and the characters changed too much. 

Rowen

For related Posts:

• Book Beginnings: The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants - Ann Brashares
• The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants - Ann Brashares
• Book Beginnings: The Second Summer - Ann Brashares
• The Second Summer - Ann Brashares
• Book Beginnings: Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares
• Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares
• Book Beginnings: Forever in Blue - Ann Brashares
• Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares

Last Night I saw the most Beautiful Sunset

I just wanted to let you all know about this most beautiful sunset....

.... And I wanted to let you know that although I've been missing for the past 8 months or so I've been thinking of you, I've got a few posts scheduled so I'm back....

... At least for the next couple of weeks or so.

Rowen

Sisterhood Everlasting – Ann Brashares

In ‘Sisterhood Everlasting’ the girls seemed generally lost. At the end of ‘Forever in Blue’ I felt that Ann Brashares had tied up most of her loose ends pretty neatly. Bee and Tibby were both experiencing their happily ever afters, however little I felt their actions deserved it. Carmen had discovered her true desire in life and her ability to act on it. And Lena, my most favourite Lena, had discovered an inner strength to be her own person.

‘

Sisterhood Everlasting’ is set 10 years on and so much has changed. Carmen is living her dream, but her dream has turned stale, and to be honest this was one of the few parts of the book that I actually bought. It’s easy to see Carmen getting so swept up in the world of Celebrities, which she’d always admired at a distance, that she lost contact with her friends, and herself, in the process.

 I liked her ‘redemption’ it was cleverly done, but I’m not sure how realistic a two day train journey without any stops is. Having never travelled in a country as large as the US I’ll let it slide and ignore the fact that most train journeys I take have stops every 5 minutes, maybe one day I’ll take that journey for myself.  It amused me to see her all too obvious addiction to technology, as she suffered withdrawal symptoms, and was glad to see her return to her former self by the end of the book.

Lena was the reverse. Rather than move forwards in the 10 year gap it’s almost as though she chose to isolate herself and internally regress. She dwells on Kostos almost constantly, despite the fact that she’d received closure in the previous book. It’s altogether unsurprising to find them reconciled by the end, and while it’s something I wanted, I can’t help but feel that they left it too long and had too large a gap to bridge. None the less they seemed happy and that satisfied me.

Bee meanwhile had quite simply paused. She had remained in the same state of inertia for the whole 10 years. In the words of Newton ‘an object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that same state of motion until an external force is applied’. In the case of Bee this external force was the events in Greece at the start of the book which propelled her into a journey of self-discovery.

I was not happy with Bee’s story. I didn’t like that she pushed Eric away, although I get where that came from. I didn’t like that she contemplated an abortion, it seemed absurdly out of character, I’m not saying no character ever should, but it just wasn’t the sort of thing that Bee would do in my opinion. But most of all I didn’t like how easily Eric took her back. She’d been gone for six months! She’d taken off without so much as a goodbye and hadn’t once contacted him. In fact she’d gone out of her way to make herself un-contactable. I know  that no matter how much I loved someone if they did that to me I’d be furious, and they wouldn’t get off as lightly as she did, there would be yelling and tears, the whole shebang, they certainly wouldn’t be able to crook their little finger and have me come running. I get that he was relieved she was safe, but it was pretty much a parody of the lost son parable.

And finally Tibby. I cried so many tears over Tibby’s story. I’m still not sure I understand how she could have a two year old daughter and not have mentioned her to her parents. I’m glad she called her Bailey, it just made sense.

And yet as the invisible driving force of the group I’m not sure why it was Tibby who had to go. Her and Brian have already suffered so much that they deserved for their happiness to just go on. I didn’t like the way that Brashares wrote her death. The way that right until the end she tried to convince you of suicide. Tibby was much too strong for that, it didn’t make sense.

I did like Brian’s reaction to her death.  The way that he wouldn’t, and perhaps couldn’t, open up to Bee for a long time. I liked the fact that he resented her, it seemed realistic, and I’m glad of it. One thing which did strike me as odd was that he mentioned that it was Tibby who’d wanted Children and that he didn’t know how to do this. He’d been caring for her younger siblings since they first met, and after the great pregnancy scare of book 4, it was he who was convinced they could make it work, her who’d pushed him away.

This book was worth reading, but the characters had often changed in ways I wouldn’t have suspected and didn’t overly like.

Rowen

For related Posts:

• Book Beginnings: The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants - Ann Brashares
• The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants - Ann Brashares
• Book Beginnings: The Second Summer - Ann Brashares
• The Second Summer - Ann Brashares
• Book Beginnings: Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares
• Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares
• Book Beginnings: Forever in Blue - Ann Brashares
• Forever in Blue - Ann Brashares

10 interesting facts about my birthday

1. Although the WWII hostilities officially ended on 9th May, the ceasefire began on 7th May1945, in the interest of saving lives.
2. On 7th May 1429, Joan of Arc ended the Seige of Orleans by pulling an arrow from her shoulder and returning wounded to lead a final charge.
3. 7th May 1718, New Orleans was founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville - This particularly tickled me in light of number 2.
4. It is the feast day of Saint Flavia Domitilla, who was related to two Roman Emperors and another Saint, although I can't find the official reason for her Sainthood.
5. 7th May 973, Otto I the founder of the Holy Roman Empire died.
6. On 7th May 2007 archaeologists discovered the tomb of Herod the Great in Jerusalem, he was the man who persecuted a generation of Infant boys in an elusive search for Jesus.
7. Eva Peron was born 7th May 1919, she was the first woman of Argentina who died in 1952, after bringing a period of relative peace to Argentina, her death plunged Argentina into mass mourning. She is also the central character in the musical Evita which has featured in the Westend and Broadway, as well as being turned into a film starring Madonna.
8. 7th May 1992, The Endeavour Space Shuttle was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
9. Orson Welles, the author of Citizen Kane was born 7th May 1915
10. Not strictly a fact about the date this last one, but they were becoming difficult to find. It's 2 days before the Annular Eclipse of the Sun also known as the Ring of Fire Eclipse.

Valentines Day

This pair of parcels was sent through the post for me by my lovely boyfriend. Every year he is determined to celebrate, even though I'd rather skip it and make a big deal of his birthday which is only four days later!

I get to see him tomorrow and we'll be celebrating on Saturday, for both events no less. On days like today I miss him more than I do on normal days, it's strange how seeing sappiness everywhere can make you want to be close to your own special someone. 

I miss him everyday. I miss being able to lean into the comfort that is him. I miss his smell, perhaps odd but a surprising amount of comfort comes from a smell. Most of all though I just miss having his arms around me in a big bear of a hug.

Then I think of my Nan, and how she must feel on a day like today, and everyday. Having been without my Grandad for 20 years now. I know she misses him all of the time, I can see it in everything she does, hear it in her voice. 

So today I've been thinking about all those who, like my Nan, are without the one they love this Valentines day.

Rowen

Pancake Day 2013

So yesterday was Pancake day. I had a couple of friends come over to celebrate and we started out our evening by eating a healthy serving of Jambalaya which my friend described as being fit to feed 400.

We next made pancakes, we first made a trial and error batch to test out our mixture. It resulted in a few dodgy ones before we got it just right at which point my other friend said. Y'know I've always wanted to add food colouring to my pancakes... so we did!

We had a rainbow pancake stack, some turned out better and it was described as a mouldy cheese and ham sandwich, but it tasted pretty good.

We rounded off our evening by playing the Big Bang Theory Party Game, which resulted in a tie for 2nd/3rd place and a much better first place.

In other news, I have a big backlog of reviews to write up which I am working on, but as always things like Coursework deadlines come first, and they're snowballing a little at the moment.

Rowen

Absentee

I've been a little of an absentee blogger over the past few weeks and for this i apologise. It's been a pretty hectic time in my life. 

At the start of that period I had some pretty major coursework deadlines. Then it was the Christmas holidays where I ended up with two weeks of unexpected work which meant that I had to do things like Christmas shopping and even making some Christmas presents in the evenings where I'd planned on having four extra days to do it in, I only work four days a week Tuesday-Friday, during the holidays, and the other week was post New Years.

The interim week was actually pretty productive, although in the field of revision for January exams rather than in the field of blogging, degree comes before blog, much though I may prefer it to be the other way round. I then ended up ill for New Years, which was a bit of a drag on a night out, being unable to stay awake let alone drink.

The last week of work also saw some crammed revision and hasty packing, ending with my dad driving me back to Uni on the Sunday morning. The final week of Semester A was pretty intense for some obvious reasons, although I was rather lucky last week and only had one exam. I kind of ambled into the beginning of Semester B in a semi-exhausted state, not helped by the fact that my friend had gone into hospital the week before with some major stuff going on.

I was home for last weekend and came back to Uni on the Sunday, my choice of timing was a bad move as it saw me arrive at Cambridge just when it was identified that there was a need for some emergency engineering work in Baldock, which saw me stuck in Royston station for around 2 hours as we waited for buses to turn up, only 2 did, in the snow without shelter. When they eventually got trains going again I and around 200 others had to wait in the snow for the train to turn up 15 minutes late during which time 3 further buses arrived which we weren't allowed to get on, and once the train did arrive we still had to wait 20 minutes on the train before it started moving. Because of the emergency this train only stopped at the larger stations which saw me delayed a further 20 minutes at Stevenage, all while it was still snowing. I arrived back to my University town to be greeted by the dark, the cold and 10cm of fresh snow,  to say that was a journey I will never forget is an understatement.

That 10cm of snow has since compacted into an inch of ice on all pavements across our Uni town, with the only clear patches being on campus, this has made my daily walk to Uni both fraught and an excellent work out. I was not a happy bunny making this trip at 8.30 Monday morning.

Then yesterday I made the trip back to Cambridge to visit my friend in hospital, fortunately she's doing much better and it's estimated she'll be out towards the end of next week. But she has been very ill so it was scary times for us all. And added to this I was more than a little nervous about making the journey to Cambridge again.

Ironically in light of this post one of my New Years Resolutions was to work out and stick to some kind of posting schedule, hopefully from now on I'll be more successful.

See you all soon.

Rowen