A Gathering Light

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There is a plotline relating to an infamous murder that took place in 1906 in the Adirondack Mountains, and the author has created fictional characters to tell this story, interweaving the murder into their lives. from my limited experiences:-/) This sounds entertaining, even if there isn't too much romance to speak of. Set in 1906 against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, Jennifer Donnelly's astonishing debut novel effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, and real, and wholly original. I would recommend this book to any reader looking for a quality YA story that doesn't involve vampires, fairies, TSTL heroines and abusive boyfriends.

There are actually two stories of Mattie being told in alternating chapters: one when she comes face to face with Grace Brown's murder, and the next is told a year before, as Mattie attends school and helps her father out with her siblings and the farm. In fact most who had never read anything by Jennifer Donnelly picked up The Tea Rose or other of her books that were written later. 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. Coupled with the superb talents of Hope Davis on the audio, I felt that I "knew" each of these characters so very well and came to care for them in much the same way that Mattie did. Is Mattie really going to be tied down to her small town by a promise she once made to her dying mother?

Without a doubt, A Northern Light is very possibly the best book I've read - and will read - this year. Mattie makes the incredibly difficult choice to leave the North Woods and go to school in New York City.

Slowly the two stories merge to one amazing conclusion as Mattie finds the courage to make very important decisions. I don't know why I should care what happens to people in a drawing room in London or Paris or anywhere else when no one in those places cares what happens to people in Eagle Bay. Mattie, suspicious of the circumstances surrounding her death, begins to read the letters Grace gave her. Instead, the rest of Grace’s story is merely consigned to the author’s notes once the story ends, which I found to be a bit disappointing.Mattie is a wonderful heroine, so clever and honest and likeable, and the plot is so deftly woven around the murder mystery and lots of other mysteries too. I love it so much I actually took a picture of it and edited it up to use it as my cellphone wallpaper. Jennifer Donnelly is the author of thirteen novels - Poisoned, Stepsister, Lost in a Book, These Shallow Graves, Sea Spell, Dark Tide, Rogue Wave, Deep Blue, Revolution, A Northern Light, The Tea Rose, The Winter Rose and The Wild Rose - and Humble Pie, a picture book for children.

The tyranny of the powerful and influential where subservience, the norm in so many relationships whether marriage, employer/employee, tenant farmer and owner, results in dreams having to be curtailed. Northern Lights by Pullman won the public vote from that shortlist and was thus celebrated as the " Carnegie of Carnegies".

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. S. as The Golden Compass (Knopf, 1996), so only one Northern Light(s) title was used on each continent.

The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be with villians getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he's been and marrying the heroine and happy endings and all that. I found myself so frustrated with Mattie’s father, who whilst suffering his own heartache seemed to refuse to understand that his children were grieving too.The chapter in which the alienation device of the ‘no happy endings’ discussion takes place (from page 354) contains another trick: the widder suddenly emerges from under her pall of booze and fecklessness to become an incipient success story. And it's not just this: Mattie yearning to be both an educated woman and eventually an author, as well as have a family and a loving husband. The sky, gray and lowering for much of the year, becomes an ocean of blue, so vast and brilliant you can’t help but stop what you’re dong—pinning wet sheets to the line maybe, or shucking a bushel of corn on the back steps—to stare up at it. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. It turns out to be just another American Dream novel, despite Donnelly having her protagonist and Weaver the black kid agree that life isn’t like books (p 336-7).