Well, better late than never so... 2018 was the year of change. There were a lot of ups and a lot of downs. Thankfully, books have been there to carry me through it. Also, reading-wise, this was an amazing year, with 44 books, including a fair number of amazing ones, I definitely had my word cut out when it came to picking out this year’s top 5. If you remember from last year, I could not even pick five memorable books, this year I had a few to choose from. Without further ado, in no specific order, here are my best reads of the year! The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd Summary Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women. Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love. My thoughts The Invention of Wings is raw. The subject-matter speaks of a time not-so-far-away where people genuinely thought about racial superiority and in the legitimacy of race-based politics. We are far from being out of the woods in this matter and books like The Invention of Wings only help emphasize some similarities between past and current treatment of minority groups, especially Blacks and African-Americans. Here, we find the real figures of Sarah Grimké, one of the narrators, and her sister, Angelica, and Hetty “Handful”, Sarah’s slave and the second narrator. Sarah and “Handful” each brought their own personalities to the novel, and both carried different, ground-breaking messages for their time. This novel is not only about slavery, but also about the roots of the feminist movement through the organization of anti-slavery associations with strong advocates like the Grimké sisters. The dual point of view perfectly serves the purpose of exposing parallel lives yet intrinsically linked lives and futures. The pacing of the novel is superb, the characters flawlessly human (an oxymoron) and the historical details are the cherry on cake. I would highly recommend this to anyone and everyone as the subject matter deserve to be observed further and since its concept superbly executed. It is simply a beautiful read.
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