Those books

We have a car trip tomorrow and I was looking for audiobooks when I started looking at Herman Wouk's body of work.  I downloaded The Caine Mutiny, as I have read all of his other books, not sure how that one snuck by, but I happened to see Marjorie Morningstar in the list and became very nostalgic.

Ahhhh, oh how I loved that book, the many times that I have read it.  I briefly considered downloading it, but the fact of the matter is, I know the story upside down and inside out ... but it got me to thinking.  What other books have affected me as much as that one?

The only other one I could come up with was The Yearling ... yet another book I could tell you verbatim what happened, and yet, the one and only time I read it I was just a kid.  I was at home, sort of kind of babysitting the other two .... so I was probably 13 or 14, but I say sort of kind of because I was in bed reading.  I was completely absorbed by the book, and had reached the end, and because I was so unhappy with the content of the ending, I kept re-reading it in the hopes that it would miraculously turn happy.  Instead, my cat jumped onto my bed at the same time my brother and sister did, and the cat vomited on me -- a full chipmunk skull fell onto my chest, my heaving chest from crying so hard at the story ... oh, yes, that was memorable.  Somehow all of that trauma is all wrapped up together, and I have been unable to pick up that book ever again!

But Marjorie Morningstar, oh how I loved that book!  I can still picture my original copy, a black binder with gray covers ... I could even tell you the entire story right now.  But I won't, because everyone should read the book on their own!  But I loved every aspect of the story ... a Jewish girl who came from the Upper West Side (or east, I don't know about that stuff!) with her strict parents and their ideas of who and what she should become, and her ideas of who she was and what she wanted to be.  It all resonated with me, from the first time I read it when I was quite young, as well as throughout my adulthood.  My mother told me that her mother had hidden the book (the actual one that I had in my possession no less!) in a drawer because it was so scandalous at the time.  Of course this is what compelled me to read it at first ... but when she meets Noel ... the black turtle-necked clad musician ... ahhhhh, it is perhaps true that I have been searching for Noel my entire life.  When in fact, Noel turns out to be a dud ... but you kind of pooh pooh that part ... because it is the beginning, when he is older and mysterious and THE BOMB ... and you don't think about the fact that he is an older adult working at a summer camp, because that would be lame, but instead you think about how damn SEXY he is.

I loved Noel as much as Marjorie did, and I got why she did, and I got everything that she did afterward and I got that she wanted to change the world and I got when she realized that you actually really can't ... I got it.  I got it all, and I kept reading, hoping that Noel would turn out to be the prince, and ... it is like a fairy tale that has no fairy in it!  It is raw truth, spelled out, beautiful ... and I couldn't get enough.

The idea that some people can blow people up to be heroes ... all on their own ... and for a short period of time, everyone believes this to be so.  But in the end, reality sets in, and in the end, a woman has to be strong, because that is what women do.  And in the end, was Noel anything other than what he was?  Because in Marjorie's eyes he was one thing, but... ahhh, poor Noel.  I have championed his cause as much as Marjorie did over the years, but with each reading I became more aware of the fact that all of his faults were always right there.  How many of us women do that to men?  Turn them into rock stars when really all they are are who they are ... just regular guys doing their thing.  And what about Marjorie?  Who thinks that changing her name from Morgenstern to Morningstar will make all the difference?  When in fact, it changes nothing at all.

Loved that book.  You should read it.