{"id":1569,"date":"2009-01-28T23:21:35","date_gmt":"2009-01-29T05:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1569"},"modified":"2009-01-31T14:02:11","modified_gmt":"2009-01-31T20:02:11","slug":"things-that-make-me-go-hmmm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1569","title":{"rendered":"Things That Make Me Go Hmmm…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finally just finished my library copy of Sonya Hartnett’s<\/strong><\/a> The Ghost’s Child<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, originally published in Australia in 2007, I believe, and published last year in the U.S. by Candlewick. Remember when Sonya stopped by in ’07<\/strong><\/a> and said quite determinedly that she doesn’t like her books to be pinned down when it comes to labels (such as “YA”)? Well, she’s done it again (I see here<\/strong><\/a> in The Guardian<\/em> that Linda Newbery wrote last year in her review, “{e}mphatically, The Ghost’s Child<\/em> has the quirkiness and the sense of being true to itself that often marks out fiction not written with any particular readership in mind”). This time she’s crafted a contemporary fable of sorts—an ethereal, lilting, poetic one at that—about the very nature (and very complicated nature) of human love. Or it could be a modern-day fairy tale? I dunno; I’m still thinking about it. And there I go, trying to categorize, too. Anyway, I wasn’t so sure about this book at first, though I’m a huge Hartnett fan, but I have to say it suddenly endeared itself to me, invited itself right in and took a seat in my mind, refusing to catch a cab and head home. It made itself some coffee and settled in to stay. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And, you may remember<\/strong><\/a>, I burnt my-own-self out pretty hard-core on reviewing novels here at 7-Imp, so much so that I don’t want<\/em> to talk further about what I thought of it. I’m simply here to share a short excerpt from it that I loved, that made me want to get on this cyber-rooftop and yawp about it. I’ll adorn this post with the book’s three different covers (U.S., UK, and Australia), and I thank Becky<\/strong><\/a> for that information. I could tell you who is talking to whom here, but it isn’t vital to appreciate the excerpt. Suffice to say that our protagonist is finally getting to ask a question she’s longed to ask of someone — and after embarking on a long journey just to ask it. (She’s already discovered her own answer to her other burning question, posed by her father: What is the world’s most beautiful thing?<\/em> Damn, I love that.)<\/p>\n

Enjoy. <\/p>\n

Hastily, before he vanished, she said, “I need to ask you a question, Feather. It’s a question bigger than the world. By the time I guessed you knew the answer, you were already gone. But I need the answer so badly that I crossed the horizon to find you.”<\/p>\n

“And I’m here,” said Feather. “So ask.”<\/p>\n

Maddy drew a breath, rehearsed the words in her head, and asked, “How can you know love, and lose it, and go on living without it, and not feel the loss forever?”<\/p>\n

“You can’t,” Feather answered. “You feel the loss forever. But you put it in a safe corner of yourself, and bit by bit some of your sorrow changes into joy. And that’s how you go on living.” <\/p>\n

Maddy saw it in her mind, a great coin flipping slowly, showing first the whiplash tail of sadness, next the warm facet of joy. Sorrow and joy, bonded so closely that occasionally they spun inside each other. “And you take pride in knowing you’re capable of great love,” she said, “and live in the knowledge that you can feel it again.”<\/p>\n

“. . . Yes,” said Feather. “You can feel it again.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, I’m done now. I hope you enjoyed that moment as much as I did. It made me put the book down and go, aaaahhhhh<\/em>. And hmmm<\/em>. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

P.S. Why oh why wasn’t this Australian cover used in the U.S. edition, too? (Really, are there rules about these sorts of things?) I think it’s just lovely and so befitting the book’s atmosphere. I also wish I knew who the artist is behind it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally just finished my library copy of Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost’s Child, originally published in Australia in 2007, I believe, and published last year in the U.S. by Candlewick. Remember when Sonya stopped by in ’07 and said quite determinedly that she doesn’t like her books to be pinned down when it comes to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adult-fiction","category-young-adult"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}