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The World Before Her

Deborah Weisgall

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Apr 28, 2013 Lauren rated it really liked it

I have heard mixed things about this book (including one friend who passionately explained why I should skip it). As I had already selected it for a book club, I was sort of stuck reading it (for this bookworm at least, one of the worst feelings in the world is having someone tell you you’ve subjected friends to reading a horrible book).

I think I read a different book.

This is an enchanting novel about two women at different points in their lives, marriages, and careers. One is set in 1880, the I have heard mixed things about this book (including one friend who passionately explained why I should skip it). As I had already selected it for a book club, I was sort of stuck reading it (for this bookworm at least, one of the worst feelings in the world is having someone tell you you’ve subjected friends to reading a horrible book).

I think I read a different book.

This is an enchanting novel about two women at different points in their lives, marriages, and careers. One is set in 1880, the other in 1980. The common theme is that both stories begin in Venice, Italy and both characters are artists (one being real-life author George Eliot).

I’m wary of dual plots. Too often, they are sickeningly cutesy and convenient (Really? You both stumble on the same diary in the same hidden room? And then you both meet a handsome man with a secret? No way!). Or one story is much stronger than the other (see Sarah’s Key with Entitled Rich Woman problems squaring off against a child uprooted by the Holocaust).

But this one works. The plots are simultaneously dependent and independent. There are parallels (Venice, unhappy marriage) but they never overwhelm the book and there’s no point where I feel like Ms. Weisgall was beating readers over the head while screaming “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT HOW CREATIVE I AM AT TYING THESE TWO STORIES TOGETHER!”

But let me get back to the writing: the words make this story. The plot is simple, if slow and rough in places, but the prose transfers this story into something special.

Honestly, I feel like an illiterate elephant in trying to elaborate on the beauty of Ms. Weisgall’s writing. The best I can say is this: I’m sick of characters in creative professions (it’s so overdone, especially novelists – writers, please give your characters a goal other than your own, thank you), but the prose in The World Before Her is so lyrical that having the main characters as anything other than an author and a sculptor would have been jarring.

This is a lovely gem of a novel, and I hope more people will come to discover and appreciate it. Highly recommended. ...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Carol Jones-Campbell rated it liked it

Shelves: book-club-pick

I've chosen to read this book a second time, as the first was not a very good experience. Will provide more feed back when I'm done. Book club read. I changed the rating from two to three, and I enjoyed it more than I did the first time. It seemed to make more sense. I still have issues with dual plots, but I got it better this time than the first time. I dove right in after finishing Milo and told myself I can't read anything until this book is finished, and glad I did. Thanks for your encourag ...more

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Apr 26, 2013 Ashley rated it really liked it

Oct 28, 2012 Alisha Rivera marked it as to-read

Shelves: readers-ink

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