There Your Heart Lies

by Mary Gordon

From the award-winning novelist Mary Gordon, here is a book whose twentieth-century wisdom can help us understand the difficulties we face in the twenty-first: There Your Heart Lies is a deeply moving novel about an American woman's experiences during the Spanish Civil War, the lessons she learned, and how her story will shape her granddaughter's path.

Marian cut herself off from her wealthy, conservative Irish Catholic family when she volunteered during the Spanish Civil War--an experience she has always kept to herself. Now in her nineties, she shares her Rhode Island cottage with her granddaughter Amelia, a young woman of good heart but only a vague notion of life's purpose. Their daily existence is intertwined with Marian's secret past: the blow to her youthful idealism when she witnessed the brutalities on both sides of Franco's war and the romance that left her trapped in Spain in perilous circumstances for nearly a decade.

When Marian is diagnosed with cancer, she finally speaks about what happened to her during those years--personal and ethical challenges nearly unthinkable to Amelia's millennial generation, as well as the unexpected gifts of true love and true friendship. Marian's story compels Amelia to make her own journey to Spain, to reconcile her grandmother's past with her own uncertain future.

With their exquisite female bond at its core, this novel, which explores how character is forged in a particular moment in history and passed down through the generations, is especially relevant in our own time. Its call to arms--a call to speak honestly about evil when it is before us, and equally about goodness--will linger long with its readers.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Spain, War, Adult Fiction, Civil War, American

336 pages, Hardcover

First published May 9, 2017

About the author

Mary Catherine Gordon is an American writer from Queens and Valley Stream, New York. She is the McIntosh Professor of English at Barnard College. She is best known for her novels, memoirs and literary criticism. In 2008, she was named Official State Author of New York.

Reviews

[Angela M · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another novel connecting the past and present time, taking place in different locations as in so many novels these days. In this case it's 1937 in RI, New York City but mostly in Spain from 1937 - 1946 and 2009 in RI. The older person in these kinds of novels has a story, a secretive past and it's assumed that the younger person who is usually floundering learns something from the past story . I find that I'm tiring of this format. Having said that, I was enlightened to learn some history of the Spanish civil war and I genuinely liked the characters.

Marian is from a well to do, staunch Catholic family with influence. Her father has enough influence to have a gay bar raided so her brother Johnny can be arrested and then committed to be "cured". The dire consequences for her beloved brother Johnny motivates 19 year old Marian to leave her family. She doesn't just walk away from them but goes far away to Spain to help provide medical assistance during the Spanish Civil War, as the wife of her brother's lover who is a doctor. Was she rebelling against the Catholicism of her family in working with the communists aiding those that suffered in Spain at the hands of the rich and the church who supported Franco or doing what she thinks will honor and preserve her brother's memory or just defying her father ? Maybe all of these . She experiences the horrors of the war, falls in love and experiences some personal horrors of own. At 92, she's made a life with loyal friends and has the devotion of her granddaughter, Amelia who at 22 can't find who she is.

There are definitely some thought provoking themes - the civil war, the role of the church in the war, the stigma surrounding homosexuality, more stringent views than today , family relationships, who people connect to and who your family really is. Even though I liked Marian and Amelia, the connection between the past and present story fell a bit short for me. I'll still give it three stars for the characters and the history I learned.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Pantheon Books through Firsttoread.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I pick up a Mary Gordon novel, I know I’m in the hands of a reliable writer who will make me think hard about universal themes — forgiveness, faith, and the spectrum between powerlessness and becoming empowered are in just about all her novels.

In There Lies Your Heart, she adds another element: history. Specifically, the book is set mainly during the War in Spain, where Franco launched a coup against the democratically elected Republic. His brand of fascism was heavily supported by the church. Thus, Mar Gordon explores (among other themes) the chasm between intelligence and imagination on one side, and idolatry on the other.

This may be a good time to state that those who are piously religious or feel uncomfortable with hearing devastating truths about the not always pure role of religion in the world should probably skip this one. In this book, Marian – who comes from an aristocratic Catholic family – marries her brother’s lover and travels with him to Spain during the height of the war, spurning her family’s heartless religious “values.” As she gradually becomes a victim of circumstances, her sense of adventure dissolves into a feeling of powerlessness, and the author does not shy away from visceral descriptions of the horror that church-sponsored fascism wrought.

Ms. Gordon makes the somewhat formulaic choice of interweaving her narrative with present day scenes. In those scenes, Marian – who is in her 90s – lives in Rhode Island with Amelia, her granddaughter, and is finally revealing missing pieces of her life to her.
As in other novels who rely on this structure, the present day scenes pale in comparison to the “meat” of the book. I never felt completely invested in Amelia and kept chomping at the bit to get back to Marian’s story.

As a result, I can’t say this is the best of Mary Gordon’s works. But I will say this: I was definitely hooked and kept turning pages. And that, to me, is worth a lot.

[Carol Storm · Rating 1 out of 5]

"There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters." ANTHONY BURGESS

"The problem of the Irish is to guard them from the huge presumption of treating the Universal Church as a friendly association of their own, and that problem has not been solved." EVELYN WAUGH

This book was excruciatingly awful. Most of Mary Gordon's books are pretty bad, but this one takes the cake! There are some good descriptions of the Spanish Civil War, probably copied from other sources. And that's about it!

When she's selling her books, Mary Gordon loves to throw around names like Henry James and Edith Wharton, but the writer she most resembles is actually John O'Hara. Almost forgotten today, he was a blunt, crude, self-educated Irish American reporter in the era of this book (1930-1960) who taught himself to write brilliant short stories at the NEW YORKER. The stories he wrote almost always dealt, in an aggressive, chip-on-the-shoulder fashion, with the striving Irish, newly wealthy and determined to elbow into high society.

Marian Taylor is the perfect John O'Hara heroine. She's the beautiful, rebellious daughter of a fabulously wealthy, rigidly Catholic clan ruled by a ruthless, bigoted patriarch (half Joe Kennedy and half William F. Buckley) and she runs away to forge her own destiny in the fires of the Spanish Civil War. Problem is, Mary Gordon is no John O'Hara. Where rough, uneducated O'Hara was capable of astonishingly meticulous detail about social niceties and ins and outs, Mary Gordon barely bothers to skim the surface. Marian drinks cocktails and smokes cigarettes, so we know she must be privileged, glamorous, and excitingly upper class.

Things don't improve when Marian runs off to Spain. The International Brigades were filled with colorful characters, but all Mary Gordon can manage is a single, grudging reference to a tough Negro nurse, and a gay Jewish husband who happens to be a doctor. Marian is not a nurse; in fact she has no real skills at all. Yet we keep hearing about how tough and smart she is. We keep hearing about how good she is at driving cars, too. But we never see her fix a flat or change the oil! So then, when the real killing and dying starts, we just get one cop out after another. Marian is tired. Marian is hungry. Marian is dirty. She just can't take it, yet oddly she never seems to notice anyone's suffering but her own. What Mary Gordon wants is to show how innately refined Marian is, not to demonstrate how she grows or adapts. When she meets a refined English nurse the two of them have a pissing contest about which was more sensitive and easily nauseated as a child! In Mary Gordon's world, weakness and cruelty are both admirable, aristocratic traits.

Suddenly Marian is pregnant, by a Spanish doctor. Without warning, her gay Jewish husband vanishes and she's married to her new guy. But he dies, horribly and disgustingly, before she can even have her baby. John O'Hara was always very frank about sex, and realistic about how adults dealt with sexual affairs. In Mary Gordon novels, sexual passion is always punished, usually in ludicrous and spectacularly unconvincing ways. Not only does good old Ramon die horribly, moaning and groaning about his sins, but Marian is immediately kidnapped by her evil mother in law, kept under lock and key, and drugged for seven years. For seven years! Oh, and she has a baby, and she hates the poor little guy. Supposedly it's because of the repressive atmosphere in Spain, but probably because of her own Catholic guilt. (She's left the church, see, and we're meant to see this as very brave. Only she's still Catholic when it comes to pointless self-torture and nasty bullying of helpless children.)

After lying around in a stupor for seven years, (strange behavior for such a feisty rebel) Marian is abruptly rescued by an Irish lady doctor and her priest brother. Sexual love is disgusting to Mary Gordon, so chaste brother and sister love gets a lot of play in this novel. But the problem is, Isabel and Tomas are utterly unconvincing as siblings, priests, doctors, etc. She's that old Mary Gordon standby, the loudmouth who smokes cigarettes and swears to prove she's tough. He's that other Mary Gordon standby, the cream puff male who worships the bullying female. Oh, and he cuts off his fingers to show he hates the way the Catholic church supported Franco in Spain and Hitler in Germany. That'll show them! Marian slobbers on and on about how wonderful these two are, because she once had a saintly brother named Johnny, who was gay and helpless and killed himself because his family was mean to him. Marian's whole shtick is that losing this pure love justifies every moment of nastiness, self-pity, cruelty and laziness in the next forty years. Sort of like Brick and his pal Skipper in Tennessee Williams' CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. But even Brick was more honest than Marian about Skipper's failings. ("Nobody ever turned so fast to a lush. Or died of it so quick!") Johnny isn't even allowed that much humanity.

So while all this is going on, Mary Gordon is using Marian's thoroughly unbelievable and unrealized experiences as an excuse to launch all kinds of attacks on the Catholic Church. God knows the church has plenty to apologize for, in Spain and everywhere else. But there's something peculiarly obnoxious about an American Irish-Catholic using the tragedy of other nations as a cheap means of having it both ways. Mary Gordon can sneer at the Reds in Spain for shooting priests down like ordinary men, and then sneer at religious Spaniards for using brutal violence to defend the church. Mixed in with this, you get some (very) perfunctory discussion of the racial prejudice of the Irish in America, with privileged weakling Marian somehow always on the side of the angels. (While still parading her elevated social status and talking like a bargain-basement Katherine Hepburn.) It's all RAH-THAH unconvincing, as if Mary Gordon still worships status and money (and still hates minorities and the poor) but in old age has learned to check just enough liberal boxes to keep her fancy sinecure at Barnard College.

The story is framed by some modern chapters, set in Rhode Island, where an elderly Marian is dying in the arms of her devoted granddaughter Amelia. You will not believe Amelia. This young woman is one of the most stupendously vacant, lifeless character ever created in fiction. She exists solely to tell her nasty, bullying, short-tempered grandmother that she's lovable, admirable, fascinating, etc. And in return Marian continually tells her stuff like "your generation believes in nothing," "you cannot understand anything of value," "I cannot explain purity to a child raised without shame," and so on. What's funny is that in some ways this stuff struck me as very authentic. I mean, think about the way Hillary Clinton's generation were so furious with all the bright young women who supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary race. You know, how dare they have ideas, values, and experiences of their own? Mary Gordon doesn't want to hear it, and neither did Hillary Clinton.

And look where we are now.

[Sheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The loving bond between Grandmother and Granddaughter help bring a painful and long repressed story to light. She loves her Grandmother but discovers that she really knew little about her rich history; love, wealth, war, bravery and great loss. For fans of Orphan Train, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, and The Nightingale. Spanish Civil War is a topic seemingly reserved for political fiction with all the Communists and Anarchist-but family, love and bravery share the page in this book.

[KOMET · Rating 2 out of 5]

"THERE YOUR LIFE LIES" is a generational story that seeks to bind the past with the present. As a novel, it is well-written and easily readable. But I found it difficult to make meaningful, emotional connections to Marian Taylor, a 92 year old woman living in 2009 Rhode Island with her granddaughter, Amelia, an especially sensitive 20-something, a recent UCLA graduate living amid the ebb and flow of everyday life.

Marian had kept her past as a secret from her granddaughter, her son (deceased), and daughter-in-law (a successful architect living in Los Angeles). She had grown up in a world of wealth and privilege in a very smug, prejudiced, complacent, and snobbish Irish American Catholic family. Marian never felt a real part of that family, except with the 2 Argentinian servants her family had hired during their sojourn in Argentina and brought back to the U.S. (from them, Marian learned to speak Spanish fluently); Luigi, the family chauffeur; and her brother Johnny, a gifted musician whose homosexuality made him a pariah in the Taylor family. Tragedy ensues and Marian leaves Vassar and goes off to Spain in 1937 to serve as a nurse on the Republican side in the bloody civil war there. Spain comes to represent a complete break for Marian from her family and ultimately her past.

Years later, in Rhode Island, Marian is compelled to come to terms with her mortality and, at the same time, with her past when Amelia one day demands to know about her beloved grandmother's origins. This revelation has long-reaching effects for both of them. In a larger sense, "THERE YOUR HEART LIES" represents a bringing together of the idealism and sacrifices made by the generation that came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War with the angst-ridden and digitally/technologically conversant present-day millennial generation. A good premise for a novel, yes. But it didn't fully resonate with me. And so, to the neighborhood used bookstore this novel goes.

[Candace · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was probably not the best choice to read "There Your Heart Lies" right after "Saints for All Occasions." The latter novel celebrates the quirks and joys of the Irish immigrant experience and its ties to the Catholic Church; "There Your Heart Lies" reminds us of everything narrow, cruel, and heartless about the Church and its influence on people who follow it. It is a dark and bitter book, only finding light when Marian, who we've followed through some especially harrowing Church-backed horrors, is old and has found her own joy outside its circle.

In 1936., Marian goes to Spain to fight Facism as part of the International Brigade, that famous dress-rehearsal for WWII. The Spanish Civil War was a bloodbath, with atrocities on both sides and what Marian sees would scar anyone for live. But it's what happens after the war that is truly diabolical.

I can imagine the eye-rolling by readers of this review: "Jeez, Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader, it's Mary Gordon, what did you expect?" It's a valid criticism. As always, the novel is beautifully rendered, but be prepared for what you'll find there. I had forgotten.

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Gordon is one of our best contemporary writers however There Your Heart Lies is very uneven. It begins with a young woman's story of estrangement from her family for religious and social reasons. She and her new husband set out on an idolized tour of Franco's Spanish revolution. They don't take much with them except ther Ivy League educations and youthful energy. Marian is forced to mature rapidly as she toils as an army nurse. This part of the story is exciting but when Gordon turns away from the war things start to sag.

The book is told in a series of flashbacks when this young heroine attempts to explain to her granddaughter, Amelia, what her life was like during Spain's Civil War and how it changed her. The sections written from Amelia's perspective are nit exciting or even very interesting. The later part of the book is still worthwhile, it just doesn't hold up to the promise of the first half.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance reader's copy.

[Carol Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Gordon's luminous There Your Heart Lies taught me a great deal about the Spanish Civil War and about how to live as a person who hates injustice. It made me examine my life, which I do often in these times.

Marian, the protagonist, is the daughter of a fabulously wealthy, right-wing Catholic family. I came from a not wealthy but quite well-to-do right-wing mostly Catholic family, so I empathized with her. As a teenager in the '30s, she was embarrassed by her family's elegant lifestyle during the Depression. When her family destroyed her brother Johnny because of his homosexuality,
she came to hate them.

She went to Spain with Johnny's former gay lover to bring medical help to its people during the Spanish Civil War. She was plunged into the horrors of war. Though her sympathy was for the Left, she saw its factionalism and brutality as well as the atrocities of the fascists.

The story shits back and forth between her time in Spain and her old age in Rhode Island. Her granddaughter wants to learn about her past, and Marian tries to tell her.

I can scarcely say how much this book moved me.

[Ginny · Rating 1 out of 5]

So disappointed with this book..... I was expecting a story that focused around the Spanish Civil War. But I felt the book really focused on the main character's sagas, personalities & emotional life. Much of the book was repetitious, telling once and again to the granddaughter.

[Cyndi · Rating 2 out of 5]

A young woman in a marriage of convenience travels from America to Spain to volunteer for the rebels during the Spanish Civil War. That part's interesting. Though it bogs down a couple years into it. Interspersed with her tale is the "real" story, Marian as an elderly woman sharing her life (but few stories) with her granddaughter. I just can't bring myself to care about her at this point, especially when we never learn what comes between the war and old age. The granddaughter then goes off on a half-cocked journey for truth that fizzles out. And there ends the book. This could have been so much better. Make it historical fiction and nothing else.

[Kate Belt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mary Gordon is an author whom I've followed for years, always looking forward to her next book. This one furthered my education about the Spanish Civil War, referred to as "the accident." I've only found one critical review of the book (Washington Post); it questioned some of the factual details in the story. I'll say that I liked the book but didn't love it as much as her other novels & leave it at that so as not to spoil the ending for others.

[Debby · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not happy with this book at all. Almost gave it one star. Did not like any of the story. I could go on but it's pointless. Don't waste your time.

[Barbara Nutting · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I’ve read written by Mary Gordon and I will read more. A slow moving historical novel that is set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. I liked the way the past was woven into the present and I learned a lot about the effects of Franco and fascism in Spain. The horrors of the Catholic Church are pointed out chapter after chapter. How the church and the government could be so evil for so long is beyond my comprehension .

Excellent characters that were easy to relate to - definitely three dimensional as opposed to cardboard cut-outs. They made the story personal and alive.

[Elysian]

DNF, no rating

I won't rate this book, because I did not finish it. I read around a quarter of it and stopped there. I never came back to it, because I lost interest in it. The book was so boring and dragging along I was not paying a lot of attention while reading it anyways. Therefore, I barely remember a thing that happened in this book.

Sadly, this book was not for me and I do not plan to ever finish this one ever.

[Amanda Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had a lot of potential; I found that it could have been much shorter. The narrator drags on and you lose the great story line in endless internal dialogue.

[Cheyanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed. First, because I expected this novel to delve into the internal political conflicts among the foreigners who fought for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. Second, because I expected the complex development of characters and relationships found in other Mary Gordon novels. Neither expectation was met; perhaps because the author was trying too hard to accomplish both.

Marian, the central character, does go to Spain as a medical volunteer with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, but she does so for entirely personal reasons. Although she has a generalized desire to help the less fortunate, Marian is primarily motivated by anger at her wealthy, ultra-conservative Catholic parents. Following the suicide of her beloved gay brother -- who kills himself rather than complete the "therapy" demanded by his parents-- Marian drops out of Vassar, enters into a paper marriage with her brother's lover, and boards a ship to Spain with an assortment of communists and anarchists. But she repeatedly protests that she's not interested in politics and doesn't take any interest in the divisions among her comrades. Which is a pity, because these are the divisions that drive the larger story and ultimately determine Marian's future as well.

It's also unfortunate that most of the characters are little more than types. Marian's awful parents and older brothers; the sensitive gay brother; the pro-Franco Spanish family with whom Marian is stranded after the civil war; a saintly, tortured priest who befriends her --all are two-dimensionally good or bad. Other characters-- including the husband who finally brings Marian back to the States and her younger son-- are little more than names. One other significant character, Marian's granddaughter Amelia, gets a good deal of story time, but mostly to listen and react-- with amazing naiveté -- to Marian's story.

So, after trudging through this book, I'm sorry to say that I still couldn't locate the "there" of the awkwardly worded title.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books by Mary Gordon have a distinct identity as they reveal in some way aspects of Catholicism, not always flatteringly. I must admit to ignorance about the Spanish Civil War -- only knowing about it as a magnet for idealistic volunteers who participated in order to defeat the fascistic Franco regime, but with the exception of For Whom the Bell Tolls, I had not read very much. Its import was in a way eclipsed by the "Big War" that was just underway, so much of the brutality and viciousness was sidelined by Spain's neutrality. Through this novel, I was also made aware of the role played by the Catholic church which was supportive of Franco.

We learn Marian's story via two eras -- a common enough trope in literature today. Here it works well since her original journey in the late '30's informs the reader of her previous life of privilege as a youngest daughter in a highly conservative High Catholic family who marries for convenience at 19, joins idealists without fully knowing their agenda, and remains in Spain until 1953. Almost 60 years later, her granddaughter Amelia learns of this former life of her Meme, and finds her own way through those revelations. While the earlier portions were the stronger, better written and more realized, the full circle aspect of the contemporary portions were fine too. Highly recommended.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quintessential Mary Gordon in that the central characters were women and the Catholic Church served as an important context in the novel. The book alternated between the story of an elderly woman at the end of her life mainly in relation to her granddaughter who is living with her and the grandmother as a young woman who went to help the Republic (against Franco) in hospitals during the Spanish Civil War. A side story that drove the plot of the earlier story was that of her beloved physician brother (who was gay) and the horrible treatment and indignities he suffered at the hands of her very conservative and wealthy Catholic parents. It is quite thought provoking to consider the central female character at two points of her life. As well, the Spanish Civil War, like all Civil Wars, offers almost limitless opportunities to explore the human condition. Overall, this is a really good story.

[Susan Springer · Rating 2 out of 5]

A young American woman, feeling out of place in her wealthy, religious Irish Catholic family, runs
away with her brother's lover to fight in the Spanish Civil War. She spends 15 yrs. there, loses two
husbands, rejects her son, and returns to the States with her third husband. Now in her nineties, living with her granddaughter Amelia, she feels the need to talk about her past life. The ending of
the book is disappointing and makes the reader question "Why did I read this"?

[Julia Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel told in two voices was set in the Spanish Civil War, and in the near present. Marian Taylor holds center stage in both parts. I thought the story of her involvement in the War was more interesting. It was all a little over the top and by the end it felt like there was a lot of repetition in the modern section.

[Marla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has a lot of sadness and heartache. I liked how it went back and forth between Meme in her 90's and when she was in her 20s. It's sad how women were treated in the 1930's. very well written. Slow paced as it traveled through Marian's life.

[Bernie Tomasso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Gordon wove a great inter-generational story between a grandmother who left her wealthy Catholic family to work among the Spanish during their Civil War and her granddaughter who becomes her caregiver at the end of her life and knows nothing of the time spent in Spain. Not only is it a great story but I learned quite a bit about the brutality of the Spanish Civil War of which I knew little.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

so interesting on a topic that fascinates me The Spanish Civil War

[Carol · Rating 2 out of 5]

oh how badly I wanted to like this book. my two stars are generous, it had so much potential

[Ari · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a slow build, but halfway through you realize you want to know as much about Marian as possible. I absolutely loved the relationship between Marian and her granddaughter, and I learned a lot about the Spanish Civil War. I felt especially connected to Marian’s experience with her Irish-Catholic family, and the author has a way of describing extremely difficult emotions and experiences.

[Francie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary Gordon's "There Your Heart Lies" is a compelling story of one woman's experience as an American volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, the secrets of her life during that time and immediately thereafter, and the sharing of her life's story with her beloved granddaughter. Moving smoothly from 1930s-40s in Spain to 2009 in Rhode Island, this work of historical fiction is powerfully narrated by Marion and at times less effectively by her granddaughter Amelia. The importance of confronting wrongdoing is central to Marion's character, and her loyalty and commitment to those she loves are strong. Amelia is a devoted and loving granddaughter, and while curious, respects the secrets Marion has kept from the family about her time in Spain and her childhood. Predictably, as Marion ages and her health fails, she agrees to share with Amelia these secrets, and Amelia must decide what to do with this information. This novel tackles important themes of the necessity of confronting evil, family relationships, war and peace, religion, and social class. I am grateful to have received an ARC of "There Your Heart Lies" from the Penguin First to Read program.

[Richthofen's Romance · Rating 1 out of 5]

Such dreck Mary Gordon writes!

[SooYoung · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost gave it a 4, but I doubt I'll ever re-read this or necessarily recommend it to anyone. Perhaps 3.5.

A few excerpts:

"Sorrow is rock, bedrock that forms at the bottom of the soul and cannot be dislodged. Happiness, joy are winds, unstable, fleeting." p 35

"But asking me to live is like asking someone whose hand is in the fire not to pull it out." p 35

"And Amelia thinks, with pride, I am descended from a woman who says things like that." p 51

"...she has unwisely opened a window, but she can't bear to close it -- that seems such an unhopeful gesture." p 57

"I may never be anything but some version of a child." p 58

"The right has a fantasy of an impossible past, the lest has a fantasy of an impossible future." p 186

"But it saddens me that people your age know so much that I don't know. So much that it's impossible for you to do anything." p 193

"...they kiss and kiss, as if it were the only activity open to them as a man and a woman." p 300

"That you mustn't add to the ugliness of the world by how you make your living." p 308

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like this book very much. Gordon tells the story of Marian Taylor, as young woman from a staunch Roman Catholic family, who, following her gay brother's suicide, marries his lover and flees to Spain to support the communists in the Spanish Civil War. The book is set in Spain in Spain fron 1937 forward, and in Rhode Island in 2009. The Spanish part of the story focuses on Marian's experience of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, although the focus is more on its impact on her spiritually (in particular, her disillusionment with the church) than on the physical events of the war. The Rhode Island part of the story draws in Marian's granddaughter Amelia; when Marian is diagnosed with cancer Amelia tries to draw from her her experiences in Spain, about which Marian has been reluctant to speak.

Marian's story is actually told twice -- once in the early part of the book and once when she repeats it to Amelia. This seems unnecessary and redundant. The Amelia section -- in which she goes to Spain to locate a long-lost son of Marian's -- is probably the weakest part of the book. I also felt the more religious/philosophical sections of the book were sort of preachy ; the same lessons could have been offered through the actions of characters rather than ramblings froorm the author. As you can probably tell, even though I finished the book, I wouldn't recommend it.

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grandmother tells her story to her loving and sensitive granddaughter, and a shocking story it is, from the rigidity of a faith with a supposedly loving god to what neighbors will do to each other in a civil war, witnessed first hand in 1936 Spain. The story alternates between the events of the past and the present, and I have to say that the story of Spain during and right after the Spanish Civil War as Marian remains as a virtual captive of her in-laws captured my interest more than the present day transfer of memories. People in Marian's life are either cruel or kind, not much in between and it is the cruelty that she tries to explain to her 23 year old granddaughter, who has been brought up in a blander, more sheltered world. Impulsively, Amelia tries to heal some past wounds, traveling to Spain to search for the past her grandmother has revealed. There she comes up against some hard truths about herself, the world as you may desire it and the world as it is. I found Amelia's story a little hard to buy and was more than a little bit annoyed by the righteousness of much of her thinking. In some ways both Marian and Amelia were more caricatures than characters, very constrained by an inherent rigidness. But you don't have to like the characters to like a story, and Mary Gordon is a superlative story teller.