The Enchanted April

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Armin

               It’s funny how just a change of scenery can (for lack of a better word) cleanse us. We can leave home completely caught up in the drudgery of daily living, but the moment we realize we are free from the physical chains of home, we can then free our minds. It can be like a heavy weight has been lifted, and we can see life with a completely new outlook. We can even be happy when we weren’t before. This is the transformation that the characters in this book have.

                The main idea/theme that I took away from this book is that love can be transformative. All four of the women left home unhappy. They were all unhappy for different reasons, but the influence of San Salvatore helped them all to love again. “Beauty made you love, and love made you beautiful.”

                Lotty Wilkins is a bit of the catalyst in this book. She was the instigator in going to San Salvatore, and then was the first to be transformed by the beauty of the place upon arriving. When she left the drudgery of her home life, she was able to blossom and become interesting (as her husband called it) and full of life and love. It was under her influence that all the other characters were able to change as well. I particularly like the new relationship between her and her husband.  Their love fed off of one another.  I believe that it was even described as a cycle, one would show affection; that would cause the other to show even more, and so on and so on. That cycle is what I believe creates a truly great relationship.

                The circumstances for the unhappiness of the Arbuthnots are different from the Wilkins, but the final results of San Salvatore are the same. This couple had thought that the newly wed love between them was gone, but because Rose started loving Fredrick again despite what his writing career was, he could love her fully again. Love creates love.

                Lady Caroline (Scrap) I thought was very interesting. She came to San Salvatore because she was tired of love; she had been over loved. One of the messages of the book is that people need a partner in order to have true love. Scrap arrived having been part of only one-sided love. Because of this she hadn’t felt true love and that was why she was so unhappy.   She had never had any problems getting people to love her, but she had to learn to love others. This revelation didn’t happen until the very end of the book, but realizing she had to love too made all the difference for her. Love could make her happy now.

              Every single character flourished under the influence of love. These characters started becoming more and more happy and beautiful (inside and out) because that is how the others saw them. It all comes back to the cycle that was mentioned before. If you believe a person has worth and treat them accordingly, then they truly become someone of worth because of how they are treated. I liked how this book was a good reminder of that.

 

Over all, I did enjoy this book.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore; A Novel by Robin Sloan

Quick overview: This is a story about a guy named Clay who finds himself working at a strange bookstore. This of course means that strange things are happening there. Very odd people come and borrow the books in the back which are filled with nonsense letters, but are really a puzzle to solve. Clay unwittingly solves the puzzle in the books with help from a friend who works at Google using computers.
 
 After Clay’s boss, Mr. Penumbra finds out he did this, he reveals the store is part of a secret 500-year-old society, the Unbroken Spine. Mr. Penumbra is convinced that using computers they can solve the ultimate puzzle of the society, an encrypted book written by one of the very first book printers. This book contains the secret to immortality. Clay secretly scans this book which is literally held chained to a secret room, and sends it off to Google to be decoded.

 The only problem is that even with the might of Google, the puzzle isn’t solved. But after finding the original typeface punches that were used to print the puzzle book, Clay realizes they have the code to break the puzzle on them. So they are then able to solve the puzzle, and life is great.

My thoughts: This book is told in first person in a stream of consciousness. This means that even when Clay the main character speaks, it’s him thinking about what he said, not “I said…” I actually really enjoyed this method of writing. It felt fresh and different from the normal first person point of view. Plus it helped that the character was rather witty, so it was enjoyable to have the story be told in this way. I did enjoy all of the characters, but the main character didn’t seem to have quite enough curiosity for me. I mean, he works at a book store during the night shift alone with tons of free time where strange people pop in to borrow books that have some kind of a secret code in them, and he isn’t even interested enough to open a book to look at it on his own. He kind of just accidently finds himself solving everything by a bit of luck and chance. That said, he was still an enjoyable character.
 
  One of the aspects that I liked about this book is that is stayed very much in our realm of reality, even with the discovery of a 500-year-old secret society trying to solve an encrypted book to find the secret to immortal life. When I realized that immortality was the goal of many of the characters in the book, I didn’t want that to be the great revealed mystery. It just didn’t feel like that would be a satisfactory ending. Most likely because finding the secret to immortality, to me, feels unrealistic. It would have taken the book to a weird fantasy world that is not felt in the rest of the book.
  So I was very pleased that when the master book was finally encoded, it turned out to be just the original printer’s very detailed and honest life story. He had included all the dirty details of being a business man. The printer just didn’t want to have his story be public at the time of his death, because it would damage the reputation of his shop he was handing down to his son. It was just a misunderstanding of why the book was encrypted that caused people to believe it contained so much more. This, I felt, was a satisfactory ending.

Overall I really enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone.