The Heaven Tree Trilogy is our summer selection for our boxed lunch book club.  We are discussing one part of the trilogy during each of the summer months.  Set in Medieval England on the border of Wales, the story is a complete departure from anything we’ve done so far in our book club.   Kings and lords, thirteenth century politics and tales of passion, love and honor are all intertwined.

I first read this book about four years ago and I can’t believe how it has completely taken me in again, even though I already know what is going to happen.  Good books are like good movies that way.  When you watch/read them again, you are rooting and hoping for something other than that which you already know is coming.  The inevitable.  If the story were to unfold in any other way, it just would not be the same.

Edmund will allow himself to fall into the hands of the White Witch.

Macbeth will murder Macduff’s family.

Juliet will not wake up before Romeo kills himself.

Anne will refuse to marry Gilbert when he first proposes.

Pollyanna will fall out of the tree.

And Harry Talvace will be true to his word whatever the cost.

Questions for Discussion:

(don’t read if you are still needing to finish the book as there are “spoilers” in the questions!)

1. Early in the novel, the relationship between Harry and his father is strained as Harry becomes old enough to be trained in the running of the estate.  Why do think this is?  Do you see any way the  story between father and son could have ended differently?

2. After Harry and Adam have run from their home and into the safety of the abbey, Harry is discussing their situation with Hugh de Lacy, the abbot, who says to him (p.70),

Harry, for God’s sake and for your own, bend that neck of yours before life bend it for you or tear your head from your shoulders.  It is not possible to live as you want to live; every man must give way sooner of later, kings, popes, all who live yield some step backwards on occasion to remain upright and draw breath.  Learn humility, while there’s yet time, before life teach you with harsher beatings than ever you suffered yet.

Would you have sided with Hugh de Lacy or Harry at this point in the story?  Why?

3. Right after this encounter with the abbot, Harry, though discouraged, finds himself delighting in the world in spite of himself.  “The world was busy and beautiful and diverse, no less now that the abbot had failed him; and for the life of him he could not help delighting in it.”

What makes this possible?

5. You want too much.  Men, and countries, and causes fail you because you expect too much of them.  Benedetta to Isambard (170)

She says this just before she agrees to go to Parfois with him as his mistress.  Why do you think she decides to go?

6. Why do you think Harry is able to bind himself to Isambard so easily after having broken away from his childhood on an estate?  (The incident with John the Fletcher and the dog (pp181-2)  seems more harsh than any of Sir Eudo’s dealings with his villeins.)

7. One day at Parfois, Benedetta and Harry are talking about Prince Llewelyn’s bowing to King John.  Benedetta defends the prince’s dignity in this action. There is a certain kind of pride that both Harry and Isambard share, an unwillingness to bow or humble oneself to another.  When Harry challenges Benedetta on this same kind of humbling, she says “The pride of a woman must be a different kind of pride.” (p. 216)  What does she mean by this?

8. What is the heaven tree?

9. Do you think that Isambard ever loved Benedetta?  Explain.

10. Isambard says to Harry soon after his marriage to Gillies, (p.252),

“To have all!” The voice labored with astonishment and despair.  “To have everything there is in life, even that last and greatest of all!  What right has one man to so much?  Where is God’s justice?”

Are there people in life who really have it all?  Is Harry a Medieval Ferris Bueller?  What is your response to people like Harry?

11. Gilleis experiences classic pregnant joy (p. 299) when she realizes that she is going to have a baby.  Can you relate a time you were “filled to overflowing” in this way?

12.  This quote on p. 316 in some ways sums up the entire book.  At what point, if any, did you see that this was the course Harry’s life would have to take?

From Adam’s hand to Owen’s head, there was no inconsistency and no chance stroke.  The deliberate assumption of responsibility, the affirmation and the challenge, had to be repeated over and over, because the world was still as it had been, and he was still as he had been, and as he would be to his death. Once he had set his own judgment against the world’s judgment, the end was implicit in the beginning.  Somewhere at the bottom of his heart he had always known that the last choice he made in the teeth of power and privilege and law must be mortal, and that nonetheless he neither could nor would turn aside from making it.

So he had no just complaint against God or man, and he would prefer none.  He had what he had chosen, he had never been one to haggle about the price.

13. Why doesn’t Harry take longer to finish his work when he knows what the end of his work will bring?

14. In the end, who do you think lost the most?  Would you have changed anything about the story?

The post Book Discussion Guide: The Heaven Tree appeared first on Alison Chino.

Boxed Lunch Book Club Today!

My discussion questions are a little slim, but mainly we are just going to talk about sisters!  Sisters are the best…and the worst.  I love my sister, but we hated each other for several years there before we realized we couldn’t live without one another!  I’m hoping that reading this book makes everyone want to share their sister stories!

Questions:

(There are also great questions in the back of this book for a discussion!)

In the first chapter (p.9), the two sisters, Connie and Faith, are left alone in a hotel room by their parents.  Their father, Billy, has just told Connie that whining makes her face look ugly.  After he leaves, Faith tells her not to belive him, that she his pretty no matter what he says.  Connie decideds to believe Faith.  How does this scene show what life is like for the two sisters as young girls?  How does their relationship with each other help them cope with their dysfunctional parents?

On opening night in New York (p.14), when Connie and Faith get to go along to the show, all dressed up, what do their two different responses to this event tell you about the two girls?  How are they different from one another?

Connie is now in high school.  Faith is working.  They are without their parents. What does the following description tell you about their relationship at this point?  They are inseparable, and separate, like parallel lines, defined by the distance between them.  Still, the thought of a year from now with Connie gone, chokes Faith a little.  She doesn’t think she knows how to live without her. (p.26)  Can you share how this description fits one of your family relationships?

p. 28.  As Faith’s relationship with Joe blossoms, the author writes that even though she has made out with a boy in the back seat of a car, she has never before knocked a boy on the arm in play.  Why are these two interactions so different?  What makes the latter mean so much more for Faith?

How do you see the affect of their childhood playing out into adulthood for Connie and Faith?

The family churns around them, with plans and alternative plans and contingency plans for getting her to the hospital in case the baby comes early, or late, or in the morning, or at night. p. 47  Do you think that Faith ever feels like she is a part of Joe’s family?  Why or why not?

On p. 48, the author says this about Faith: She will never catch up to his version of the world. This is the beginning of the end of their marriage.  What happened?  Who is at fault?  Do you think they could have saved their marriage at this point?  How?  The official break up happens on pp.52-53.  What about this scene stands out to you?

p.56  It is an unpleasant but strangely welcome feeling: her old, frozen self, finally delivered from the terrible trouble of love. What does this quote say to you about Faith?  Why does mean by the phrase terrible trouble of love? What patterns from your early life do find it easiest to fall back into?

Why is Faith able to wait for the chickadees?  p.131  she stands the cold, the birds’ indifference, and the inherent foolishness of this act with the patience of one who has not time but well–a whole canyon–of faith

On p. 201, Connie says to Faith about Isadora:  I thought I had a real sister.  WHY does she say this??  What things have you said to your sister (or other family members) that you wish you could take back?

How does the arrival of Isadora change the story for Connie and Faith?  Over the course of the book, how does her presence change Connie and Faith?

On p. 218, when Faith and Joe are talking about where things went wrong, Faith talks about how terrified she was when her children were born that she would turn into her parents.  She remembered feeling helpless to take care of Connie all over again.  What fears do you face about parenting that you think might be from your own childhood?

With which sister do you most identify?  Share why.

I’m down to the wire on getting this written out, so sometimes you just have to put a Trader Joe’s pretzel on a spoonful of peanut butter and call it lunch!  Happy Thursday!

The post Book Discussion Guide: Secret Language appeared first on Alison Chino.

Our Boxed Lunch Book Club meets tomorrow from 12-1.  This month we are discussing Carol Shields novel, Small Ceremonies (1976), which is about a biographer named Judith who collects details about people and events.  Interestingly, in the novel, Judith is writing a biography about Canadian pioneer Susanna Moodie and in the same year that this novel was published, Carol Shields also published a biography of Susanna Moodie.  That detail was so fascinating to me, especially since we are discussing a book that is largely about making story from minutiae.

So here are the questions:

Opening Questions: (These are for everyone to discuss as while coming in, finding a spot, eating…before the more formal discussion begins.)

At the end of the book (p. 181), Judith declares herself what we now know her to be: a watcher.  She says that watching events as an outsider enlarges her.  Do you consider yourself to be a watcher?  If so, describe this characteristic in yourself.  If not, what opposite or contrary word would you use to describe yourself?

What are your small ceremonies?  What are the things that you do every day (every week, every month) that might only be noticeable to someone like Judith?  Which ones are intentional?  Which are mindlessly routine?

Questions for Discussion:

On p. 3, Judith says that September is the real beginning of the year. Why do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Stories (p.52): It’s the arrangement of events which makes the stories.  It’s throwing away, compressing, underlining.  Hindsight can give structure to anything, but you have to be able to see it. Breathing, waking, sleeping; our lives are steamed and shaped into stories.

Susanna Moodie (p.53) and a red hard-covered book by Kipling that Richard is reading are two things mentioned by Judith that make up the landscape of the Gill home, at least in this particular season.  What objects or topics are part of the current fabric of your home right now?

Why then can’t I shut out the wool? Let’s talk about the incident of the wool.  Can you relate to Judith’s response  to Martin’s project? …he’s developed a soft spot on the brain.  …but what can be done with a man who makes a fool of himself? (p.89)  What does the development of this project tell you about Judith and Martin’s relationship?  How does it play itself out throughout the novel?

Judith and her friend, Nancy Krantz, discuss occasional little surprises on p.116-7.  Nancy tells her peach story, which reminds Judith of some stationary given to her by a stranger.  Can you think of a similar surprising incident in which you have been in just a few minutes blessed with a gracious detail that was…so completely unasked for (Nancy’s words)?

Salutations:  Judith concentrates on what people call one another, both in her writing (Could anyone love a man she called by his surname? p.54) and in her life (Is he caught in that slot of growth where Mommy is too childish, Mother too severe and foreign? p.94)  What do the people in your house call you?  Do you think much about these names?  What might a biographer like Judith say about the names you call one another?

The power of the casual curse (p.49): Judith talks about how a person takes on a characteristic simply because we say they have it.  She several examples: They call their daughter Meredith a geologist because she collects rocks as a young child.  She, herself, has become wry because Furlong called her so.  Where in your life do you see this occur?

When Judith reads her completed novel manuscript with the stolen plot, she says that she understands why artists sometimes destroy their work, an act she had until now thought inexcusably theatrical.  Can you remember a time when you had the desire to obliterate something that was shameful, infantile, degrading (p.74)?  Have you ever shredded a canvas or destroyed a manuscript?

Judith’s illness in January:  She states (p.93): I have never in my life been so ill.  I can hardly believe I am suffering from something as ubiquitous as flu, and it seems preposterous that I can be this ill and still not require hospitalization. Have you ever felt this way?  Was your experience of a long or debilitating illness similar to Judith’s?  Describe.

Always the biographer, Judith manages to describe characters’ personalities for us in one succinct paragraph.  She does this with Furlong (p.19), Meredith’s friend Gwendolyn (p.41) and Polly Stanley (p.129).  Do you tend to sum people up in this way?  Are these accurate or fair portrayals?  Why or why not?  How might Judith sum you up?

Judith finds one of Susanna Moodie’s novels to be very helpful in her research because Susanna wrote her own story in the fictional character Flora. (p.155) Since Carol Shields was also a biographer of Susanna Moodie, one might wonder if this is a clue to the reader that she is doing the same thing.  Writing her own story in this novel.  A story within a story within a story.  If you were to write a fictional version of yourself, what would you look like?  How might you improve yourself?

Toward the end of the book (pp.110-111 and pp.124-125), Judith describes her disappointment with Susanna in her later life.  She says that she has lost her vision.  No longer destitute, she has grown cranky. Why do you think Judith feels let down by Susanna?

In this novel of details, were there descriptions of people, places or events that stood out to in particular that you can share?  (Feel free to read a portion you marked.)  Her mother’s letter and unsympathetic impulses made me laugh because they might have been describing me exactly: Even our childhood illness were begrudged us. (p. 95)  To what character did you relate most?

Next month we will meet on May 28th for lunch and discuss Secret Language by Monica Wood.  We welcome anyone to join us!

The post Book Discussion Guide: Small Ceremonies appeared first on Alison Chino.

Here’s the book discussion guide I used for our boxed lunch book club back in February The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima.

1. Love at first sight.

Here’s a quote from Chapter 2 (p.13) right after Shinji has seen Hatsue for the first time.

Shinji always went to sleep easily, but last night he had the strange experience of lying long awake.  Unable to remember a day of sickness in his life, the boy had lain wondering, afraid this might be what people meant by sick.

Is this being in love?  Why or why not?

Can you share a similar sleepless night experience?

Here’s another description of Shinji “in love?”

Ch. 3, p.21-22

Shinji was not at all given to brooding about things, but this one name, like a tantalizing puzzle, kept harassing his thoughts.  At the mere sound of the name his cheeks flushed and his heart pounded.  It was a strange feeling to sit there motionless and feel within himself these physical changes that, until now, he had experienced only during heavy labor.

He put the palm of his hand against his cheek to feel it.  The hot flesh felt like that of some complete stranger.  It was a blow to his pride to realize the existence of things within himself that he had never so much as suspected, and rising anger made his cheeks even more flaming hot.

Again, true love?

2. Discussion of Mishima’s descriptive writing:

Here is a description of Shinji’s boss in chapter 2 (p.14)

Jukichi Oyama, master fisherman, owner of the Taihei-maru, had a face like leather well-tanned by the sea winds.  The grimy wrinkles on his hands were mixed indistinguishably with old fishing scars, all burned by the sun down into their deepest creases.  He was a man who seldom laughed, but was always in calm good spirits, and even the loud voice he used when giving commands on the boat was never used in anger.

I love this description of Jukichi.  To me, he is the strong, sure male in Shinji’s life.  What kind of influence do you think he has on Shinji?

Are there other descriptions that stood out to you in Mishima’s writing?

Here’s another one I loved.

Ch. 2, p. 17

Lunchtime came.  Jukichi dressed the flatheads on the engine-room hatch and cut them into slices.  They divided the raw slices onto the lids of their aluminum lunchboxes and poured soy sauce over them from a small bottle.  Then they took up the boxes, filled with a mixture of boiled rice and barley and, stuffed into one corner, a few slices of pickled radish.  The boat they entrusted to the gentle swell.

I can smell the sea.

3. From Ch. 2, p. 19

Surrounded though he was by the vast ocean, Shinji did not especially burn with impossible dreams of great adventure across the seas.  His fisherman’s conception of the sea was close to that of the farmer for his land.  The sea was the place where he earned his living, a rippling field where, instead of waving heads of rice or wheat, the white and formless harvest of waves was forever swaying above the unrelieved blueness of a sensitive and yielding soil.

Even so, when that day’s fishing was almost done, the sight of a white freighter sailing against the evening clouds on the horizon filled the boy’s heart with strange emotions.  From far away the world came pressing in upon him with a hugeness he had never before apprehended.  The realization of this unknown world came to him like distant thunder, now pealing from afar, now dying away to nothingness.

What was your view of the wider world at the age of 18?

4. Chapter four is when Shinji and Hatsue have a chance meeting at the observation tower.  It is a totally innocent and precious meeting, and when Shinji tells Hatsue his name but asks her not to tell anyone that he helped her find her way for fear of gossip…

Ch. 4, p. 32

Thus their well-founded fear of the village’s love of gossip changed what was but an innocent meeting into a thing of secrecy between the two of them.

What was the effect of Shinji and Hatsue’s having “a secret” between them?

5. From Ch. 5, p. 33

Until now the boy had been leading a peaceful, contented existence, poor though he was, but from this time on he became tormented with unrest and lost in thought, falling prey to the feeling that there was nothing about him that could possibly appeal to Hatsue.  He was so healthy that he had never had any sickness other than the measles.  He could swim the circumference of Uta-jima as many as five times without stopping.  And he was sure he would have to yield to no one in any test of physical strength.  But he could not believe that any of these qualities could possibly touch Hatsue’s heart.

Can you relate to this experience of having a peaceful, contented existence turn into a time of torment?  Share about that.

6. Chiyoko

In Ch.8, p. 79, when Chiyoko is home from Tokyo, we get a glimpse of how she is different from the islanders.

Chiyoko began to long for Tokyo.  She longed for the Tokyo where, even on such a stormy day, the automobiles went back and forth as usual, the elevators went up and down, and the streetcars bustled along.  There in the city almost all nature had been put into uniform, and the little power of nature that remained was an enemy.  Here on the island, however, the islanders enthusiastically entered into an alliance with nature and gave it their full support.

Explain to which view of nature you relate to more, the islanders’ or Chiyoko’s .

Ch. 11, p. 117

She feels badly about hurting Shinji and wants to make peace before she leaves, even though he doesn’t even know that she has done something to hurt him.  So instead of apologizing she ends up asking him if he thinks her face is ugly.

Shinji’s answer was immediate.  Being in a hurry, he escaped a situation in which too slow an answer would have cut into the girl’s heart.

“What makes you say that?  You’re pretty,” he said, one hand on the stern and one foot already beginning the leap that would carry him into the boat.  “You’re pretty.”

As everyone knew, Shinji was incapable of flattery.  Now, pressed for time, he had simply given a felicitous answer to her urgent question.

The boat began to move.  He waved back to her cheerfully from the boat as it pulled away.

And it was a happy girl who was left standing at the water’s edge.

Why do you think the author included this scene?  What do you think is Chiyoko’s purpose in the story?

7. In Ch. 9, The idiot Yasuo has become obsessed with “possessing” Hatuse and basically the gods protect Hatsue through a hornet.

Then, in chapter 10, Yasuo, having failed in his goal of raping Hatsue, proceeds to spread rumors about her and Shinji instead that eventually reach Hatsue’s father.

What do you think is the purpose of Yasuo’s character.  Is he real to you?  Have you met someone like him?

In general, are the characters in The Sound of Waves real to you?  Why or why not?

8. After everyone knows everything, Shinji is on the boat with his boss and friend reading the letter from Hatsue.  His boss chides him about it all, but Shinji…

Ch. 11, p.112

Shinji…he was not sensitive and easily wounded the way a city-bred boy is during the time of his first love, and to Shinji the old man’s raillery was actually soothing and comforting rather than upsetting.  The gentle waves that rocked their boat also calmed his heart, and now that he had told the whole story he was at peace; this place of toil had become for him a place of matchless rest.

This is why men go fishing, eh?

What do the men in your life do today that mirrors being out on a fishing boat?

Do you have a place of toil that can be a place of matchless rest when you are weary?  What is it?

9. Shinji’s mother:

Ch. 12

Shinji’s mother feels the weight of her son’s unhappiness (can we all relate to this?) and so she goes to visit Hatsue’s father, but he won’t see her.

p. 129

The mother could not bring herself to tell her son about this fiasco of hers.  Looking for a scapegoat, she turned her spite against Hatsue and said such bad things about her that, instead of having helped her son, she had a quarrel with him.

And further on p. 129

Thus in came about that because she had tried to do a good deed and had failed, the mother became lonelier than ever.

Can you tell about a time that your very best intentions for helping your child turned into a quarrel instead?

Why do these encounters tend to go so wrong?

Does anything good come of the mother’s failed “good deed?”

10. Ch 14

Shinji and Yasuo are both assigned to Hatsue’s father’s boat.

What do you think about this plan?  (Terukichi’s motives are revealed to us later in Ch. 15 when he tells the Mistress Lighthouse Keeper his real reasons for putting Shinji and Yasuo on his boat together.)

Do you wish that our own marriages and those of our children were still decided by great feats of strength and courage?

What do you think about Terukichi’s declaration in Ch 15, p. 175    that

“if he’s got get-up-and-go, he’s a real man.”

How would you describe a real man?

The post Book Discussion Guide: Sound of Waves appeared first on Alison Chino.

This week I’ve been getting ready for our boxed lunch book club that we do once a month at church.  This month’s book is I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.  For several days I’ve been rereading my favorite parts of this book and am amazed anew at the way Maya Angelou is able to make words dance.  To begin with, she is an absolute genius with titles.  All of her books have titles that make me sigh and tantalize me with wonder about what could be behind such a perfectly crafted phrase.  I can hardly choose a favorite among I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Diiie and All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes.

Maya Angelou started writing Caged Bird as a sort of grief therapy the year that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.  He was killed on her birthday, and she sent flowers to Coretta Scott King in lieu of celebrating her birthday every year following his death.  I am so thankful that for her, hope and courage must have prevailed in her heart after that sad day in Memphis.  Otherwise she would not have been able to put down her story for all who are willing to be blessed by the telling of her first 16 years.  Caged Bird was the first of six autobiographies Angelou eventually wrote, which I have recently discovered have been published together in one lovely volume.  I think it is perhaps my duty as an Arkansan to own this book.  I will rush right out and get it, just like I did my junior year in college to find her poems.

I will always remember encountering Angelou for the first time in a class taught by Dr. Martha Washington at the University of Central Arkansas.  She was a friend of Maya Angelou’s and I remember her lamenting to us how rarely she was able to see her friend, because of how painful it was for her to return to the state that represented so much pain, hardship and racial hatred.  Angelou’s poem My Arkansas reveals a side of my home state that I am so ashamed to see, one that many of us choose not to notice.

Dr. Washington read aloud to us several of Maya Angelou’s poems, but it was when she read Our Grandmothers that I decided I had to have a book of Maya Angelou’s poetry of my very own.  Reading her poems again this week has made me laugh, cry, sigh and smile.  Actually, I spent a lot of money on books that semester (and every semester since), as Dr. Washington opened a whole new realm of authors to me through her mesmerizing storytelling.  I will always be grateful for the doors to my heart that she opened, both directly and indirectly as one book led to another, starting a trail of reading that continues to this day.

My syllabus from Dr. Washington’s class as I best remember it:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Cane by Jean Toomer

Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction by Terry McMillan

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

The Women and the Men by Nikki Giovanni

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Anyone is welcome to come to Boxed Lunch Book Club at Fellowship North.  January 29, 2009 from 12-1.  Bring a lunch and an open heart! Next month’s book is The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima.

The post I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou appeared first on Alison Chino.

*Our monthly Boxed Lunch Book Club meets this Thursday, November 6 at Fellowship North from 12-1pm.  All are welcome.

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At church this fall, Whitney and I are hosting what we are calling a Boxed Lunch Book Club.  I am super excited about it, but I am a little nervous.  Because lots of other people are super excited about it too, so I have sold like 20 books.  I am used to a book club discussion being 5 or 6 people, so I have some research to do.  Taido says I had better get my lecture notes ready, which is not even funny.  Actually the idea of my standing up in front of more than three people to talk is a little bit funny, in a gut-wrenching kind of way.  But maybe after everyone reads the book I chose, they won’t want to come.  Because maybe not everyone loves Susan Vreeland as I do.  Let me tell you how much.  For the church book club, we are reading Girl in Hyacinth Blue, which is Susan Vreeland’s first and MOST wonderful book.  And for my regular book club, which it also happens to be my month to host, we are reading her new book, Luncheon of the Boating Party.  If you are in the area consider yourself most cordially invited to come to Fellowship North on October 9th at 12pm for lunch and book discussion of Girl in Hyacinth Blue.  You can bring your own lunch or order out with us for $10.

I was first introduced to Susan Vreeland years ago by a darling gal with whom I sold books in my Chicago days, which were also Taido’s seminary days, and our newlywed days.  I gobbled up Girl in Hyacinth Blue.  Vreeland writes historical fiction about real artists and art.  This first book is about a fictional Vermeer painting that travels from family to family, leaving its mark on a large cast of characters.

Luncheon of the Boating Party is about the evolution of the painting of the same name.  I am still reading it and enjoying the painting coming to life as Auguste Renoir manages to handle having more than a dozen models assemble every Sunday afternoon while he paints.  I will never see the painting again without imagining all the different relationships of the models, to each other and to Renoir.  He only painted from real life instead of from memory, so his canvases full of people laughing and eating and living are all the more amazing to me.

Book club or no, both books are delightful.  I also loved The Passion of Artemisia, whose story haunted me while I searched for her paintings in Florence, but was less wowed by The Forest Lover.  I blame my state of mind at the time though, because I am sure it was genius.  It must have been me that wasn’t.

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