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Dec 01, 2010

karen rated it:

this monday-morning float is for you, alfonso!

oh, a northern light, you were way better than i expected. i used to get really angry at this book, because it would come up in resort all the time and some people would just shelve it in my section because it looks like a grown-up book, not like teen fiction, and i would always have to be yanking it off the shelves and saying "nooooo, you go downstairs!!" like shooing away a mischievous dog.

while i was reading it, More...

37 comments like (39 people liked it)

Sep 01, 2011

Janina rated it:

I don’t quite understand why this book hasn’t caught my attention earlier. It is excellently written, features a strong and likable heroine and perfectly captures her hopes and fears in an era so different to our own. It touches on a lot of issues – racial injustice, the situation of women at the beginning of the 20th century, poverty and family ties – and it does so in a very realistic way. It doesn’t look at things through rose-coloured glasses, and it certainly doesn’t offer an ending with a More...

10 comments like (11 people liked it)

Dec 23, 2009

Heather rated it:

“I had looked around. I’d seen all the things she’d spoken of and more besides. I’d seen a bear cub lift its face to the drenching spring rains. And the silver moon of winter, so high and blinding. I’d seen the crimson glory of a stand of sugar maple in autumn and the unspeakable stillness of a mountain lake at dawn. I’d seen them and loved them. But I’d also seen the dark of things. The starved carcasses of winter deer. The driving fury of a blizzard wind. And the gloom that broods und More...

2 comments like (20 people liked it)

Jul 19, 2010

Allison (The Allure of Books) rated it:

Lyrical. Captivating. Haunting.

All the different facets of this novel add up to make one of the best stories I have ever read. From the very first page, Mattie Gokey's zeal for words makes the pages of the book turn themselves. Weaved throughout Maggie's fictional struggles is the real life story of the death of Grace Brown, as seen through Mattie's brief (and fictional, of course) interaction with her, and letters that she left behind (the letters are real, by the way).

T More...

2 comments like (10 people liked it)

Nov 05, 2011

Leanne rated it:

This book is an ambitious attempt. "A Northern Light" weaves together a true crime (which inspired An American Tragedy) racism, poverty, feminism, and a young woman's journey to self-discovery. The author also writes about two different time settings, which are Mattie's past memories before coming to the Glenmore hotel, and Mattie's present time. In Mattie's present time, she discovers that a visitor staying in the hotel, Grace Brown, had drowned in very mysterious circumstances. But More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Apr 22, 2011

Becky rated it:

I love books about booklovers. I love the feeling of connection that I have with people who appreciate books and words the same way that I do. I felt this especially with Mattie, because she loves words and language and writing, but doesn't know exactly how to use those words... they are just built up inside her, preparing her for when she will be able to express herself.

When I started this book, I wasn't sure if I would Love it (with a capital "L") as some of my friends h More...

4 comments like (8 people liked it)

Sep 13, 2010

Tatiana rated it:

An excellent YA novel. It didn't make me bawl my eyes out however, therefore only 4 stars.

Set in 1906, the book follows an important period in a 16-year old girl's life, when she faces the dilemma of what her future will be. Mattie is an aspiring writer and yearns to attend university, but her family responsibilities hinder her dreams. Will she choose to risk it all and try to find her own independence or will she succumb to her family's wishes and abandon her aspirations to instead More...

13 comments like (8 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Amy rated it:

This book is a delightful read full of thoughtful and realistic characters. The setting is loosely based on the murder of a women in Upstate New York that also inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. The main story revolves around a young girl who desperately wants to go to college and whose family is desperately poor. The story creates a vivid portrait of rural life in the Adirondacks and the sharp distinction of pursuing your dreams and being loyal to your family and sometimes having More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Laura rated it:

I hated to be away from this book and I was sad to finish it. Mattie is an enchanting character and the story is all the stuff Little House by Laura Ingalls Wilder doesn't mention. The terror of watching a woman you love have a difficult birth, the disgusting things that happen to those with grippe, the pain of losing a mother to an illness.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 28, 2011

Monique rated it:

I was set to giving this book a three-star rating when I happened to read on the Author's Note part that the characters of Grace Brown and Chester Gillette, as well as the facts of Grace's murder in the Adirondacks and the fishing out of her body from the waters of the Big Moose Lake, are actually real people and events. Thus, although the book's main protagonist, Mattie Gokey, was fictional, the novel was actually constructed upon and based on history.

And I have a certain penchant fo More...

5 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2008

Melissa rated it:

I have mixed feelings about this book. Parts were written well; other parts were more of a stretch. Some of the events were extremely predictable; others were a total surprise. Some events and characters seem to have no point in the overall plot, and others that have a greater role in the plot hardly appear at all. Having taken a number of creative writing classes, I know these things to be things most writers avoid. I wouldn’t call this great writing. It is overall an engaging book, but not gre More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2008

Laura rated it:

I can’t even begin to summarize this book. It’s so complex, but I’ll try my best.

It’s 1906 and Mattie Gokey wants to go to college in New York City. There’s only one problem- she’s a girl. Mattie works at the hotel, and Grace Brown gives her a packet of letters to burn. Mattie forgets, and the next day Grace’s body is found drowned at the bottom of the pond.

The story alternates between the present and the future until they meet up. I found this book very intriguing, thou More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Caroline rated it:

A co-worker of mine had been telling me to read this book for years, but I kept putting it off, thinking it didn't look all that interesting. I finally picked it up, and just couldn't stop reading it! The narration style is very powerful, told from the point of view of a young girl that is trying to make a decision between staying on her family's farm like she promised her mother she would, or to go to New York City to go to college.

At the same time, she is also reading the letters o More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 18, 2011

Beth rated it:

"I know it is a bad thing to break a promise, but I think now that it is a worse thing to let a promise break you."

I've often wondered about what goes on in the lives surrounding a horrific tragedy. We get to know the victims story so very well through the newspaper and court records. What we don't know is what was it really like in that time period, era, location.

Jennifer Donnelly transported me to 1906 to the "North Woods" into the lives of the pe More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2008

Rosianna rated it:

It wasn't until the very end of this book that I realised exactly how much I loved it. I am unsure if I would call it enjoyable, more like a very well written, intelligent and absorbing read rather than something I would call uplifting. It's definitely haunting, and definitely something everyone should read.

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 30, 2009

Sarah-Greenbeanteenqueen rated it:

Sometimes there are books that draw you in so completely to the story and the characters you don't want to let go. This was one of those reads. I loved this book.

A Northern Light is a richly layered character driven novel that is a joy to read. The great thing about Jennifer Donnelly is that I never felt she bogged down in the details as some writers do, especially when it comes to historical fiction. I would give this one to readers who might shy away from that genre because Mattie More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 20, 2011

Margo rated it:

Top notch YA literature, just as fast to read as the best action-packed stories, but with richly layered subplots and themes and skillful, graceful writing.

I am very, very impressed. This is a book I could easily re-read a dozen times and still find new wonderful things inside of it.

Set in 1906 in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, the story is billed on the back cover as a murder mystery: 17 year old Mattie works at the resort hotel where a girl just a year older th More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 28, 2011

Aleeza rated it:

Last year, I used to go every day to the library of the bank where my dad works at—I was homeschooled, and it was the perfect place to study for upcomin’ exams. There I stumbled upon a Reader’s Digest Condensed Version book, which basically features ¾ abridged books in one volume, and one of the novels it featured was A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly (which I later found out was called A Northern Light in the states). Since I am the queen of procrastination, I began reading it and soon was More...

1 comment like (9 people liked it)

Apr 09, 2011

Tina rated it:

Original post at One More Page

I was never a big fan of historical novels because in my mind, they're equivalent to classics: slow reading and oftentimes, hard to read. I tend to shy away from any novel set in any part of history that isn't a classic because...well, classics are classics for a reason that's why I feel the need to read them. Historicals are just that, and it doesn't really call my name.

That's just me being a book snob, excuse me there.

But the go More...

4 comments like (7 people liked it)

Apr 21, 2010

Karla rated it:

A timeless comeing of age story set in the early 1900's told thru Matie Gokey who at 16 years old, is a promising young writter with an independent heart and a love for books, who with help of a teacher with new ideas unwelcome in that day and age, sees a spark in Mattie to push her to apply herself. She is given a opportunity to accept a scholarship to Barnard college or stay in the North woods and marry a handsome farmer with his own dreams.
The true love letters of the 1906 Grace Brown More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 08, 2011

Kelly rated it:

[I would consider this one book that I should have given a review on ages ago:]

Nothing reaches historical fiction reader's hearts more drastically than a woman who is locked up inside a world she no longer feels she is a part of. A Northern Light is a perfect example of that type of plight, and an award-winning example at that. Mattie Gokey (I love that last name, it's like a cross between a poky cheese and an alpaca) is tangled up in her feelings for Royal, a handsome but u More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 19, 2008

Kirsti rated it:

I rate one star not because "I didn't like it" but because there is a nauseating amount of this genre book in existence. The genre of a bookish, misunderstood girl who fights against the strictures of society so that she can be a liberated woman. The genre of book where the author tries to set the world straight on what a girl should do with her life and how she should be treated. The most galling is that the author writes the protagonist (Mattie) as disliking books with "happy e More...

8 comments like (9 people liked it)

Apr 29, 2008

Rachael rated it:

The year is 1906. Mattie Gokey is only sixteen years old. She is fascinated by books and words and desperately wants to go to college. She has the brains, but not the means. Her family has been struggling financially ever since the death of her mother. Mattie feels that she’ll be trapped in Eagle Bay until an interesting set of circumstances permits her to take a job at the Glenmore Hotel. With this opportunity, Mattie plans to save up as much money as she can so that she can make it to college. More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 10, 2008

Rai rated it:

I really enjoyed this book. It took until the third or fourth chapter to get me into it, though. It starts out written in the present-tense/first-person style that I really can't stand. But only a few chapters are written that way and I learned to get along with them.

The book is based on the true story of Grace Brown's murder in 1906, seen through the eyes of a fictional character named Mathilda Gokey. The telling switches from the past to the present of Mattie's life leading up to More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 24, 2009

Brittany rated it:

This book is a fictional, coming-of-age tale that revolves around the real 1906 death of Grace Brown that took place in rural New York state. (See An American Tragedy and its 1951 film adaptation A Place in the Sun starring Elizabeth Taylor).

Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey and her family are left nearly destitute by her mother's death and her father's inability to care for the younger children and run the family farm by himself. Mattie is at a personal crossroads when, at a hotel where More...

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Mar 13, 2009

Barky rated it:

Mattie Gokey is a teen girl living in the Adirondacks in the 1900's. She's intelligent and has a flair for telling a story, which gets her a scholarship to Barnard College in New York City. But it doesn't seem that she'll ever be able to go. Her mama's passed away and she's struggling to take care of her 3 little sisters and her pa in addition to finishing her schooling. Plus, her pa would never understand. And even if he did, how is Mattie ever going to find the money to get her to NYC, and pay More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 24, 2009

Jeanne rated it:

Recommended by one of my 6th grade students, it is part murder mystery, part historical-fiction, part coming of age story. I really enjoyed the main character, Mattie, and the attention the author gave to all the characters. She brought the time and place, the Adirondacks in 1906, to life. She also gives young readers (the book is labeled as young adult fiction) a realistic sense of the dilemma of women in a time and place when marriage and homemaking were not seen as choices, but as obligations More...

0 comments like

Jan 18, 2009

Lauren rated it:

I bought this book at a Target in North Carolina on my way to my first NASCAR racing experience. I thought I would get bored, so I bought this book to read during the race. Turns out, I got so wrapped up in the flying cars that I never cracked the book, but I did read it after returning home. The first read-through didn't impress me much. But this was my own fault, not Jennifer Donnelly's. I was too ignorant, at the time, to realize the book in my hands was a piece of art, masterful, and poignan More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2009

60rd1$3_76 rated it:

A Northern Light is a very interesting book!! The way the author uses their details the way she makes your mind slip into the book it is just MIND BLOWING!! Jennifer Donnelly makes you feel like your actually in the book!! the book is about a girl named Mathilda Goeky and she lives on a farm with her father and her two sisters. Matt is what everyone calls her for short, Matt is stuck doing the chores and hard work her mother should be doing but unfortunately her mother died of cancer. She loves More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 11, 2012

Helen rated it:

It was absolutely fascinating and had so many echoes of stories my mother told me about growing up on a prairie farm and leaving home to work as 'help' in others' homes. The characters and attitudes were exactly what I have heard about from older people and the whole fictional part of the book was so realistic that I wanted to go down the road to give Mattie a hand. MS Donnelly did try to fit a tremendous amount into the book, though. She got racial prejudice, economic dissonance, village small More...

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