September | 2009 | Book Chatter

In The Heart of the Canyon by Elisabeth Hyde

Friday Finds is hosted by Should Be Reading.

Here’s the blurb from the publisher:

From the author of The Abortionist’s Daughter, a gripping new novel about a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon that changes the lives of everyone on board.

Meet Peter, twenty-seven, single, and looking for a quick hookup; Evelyn, a fifty-year-old Harvard professor; and Ruth and Lloyd, river veterans in their seventies. There’s Mitchell, an overeager history buff with no qualms about upstaging the guides with his knowledge. There’s Jill from Salt Lake City, wanting desperately to spark some sense of adventure in her staid Mormon family; and seventeen-year-old Amy, so woefully overweight that she can barely fit into a pup tent, let alone into a life jacket.

Guiding them all is JT Maroney, who loves the river with all his heart and who, having made 124 previous trips down the Colorado, thinks he has seen everything. But on their first night, a stray dog wanders into their campsite, upsetting the tentative equilibrium of this makeshift family. Over the next thirteen days, as various decisions are second-guessed and sometimes regretted, both passengers and guides find that sometimes the most daunting adventures on a Colorado River trip have nothing to do with white-water rapids, and everything to do with reconfiguring the rocky canyons of the heart.

I almost picked this one up at the library last night but with all of the books that I am reading over the course of this month, I decided to hold off for a bit. What did you find this week?

The Danish Girl
By David Ebershoff
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Pub. Date: February 2001
ISBN-13: 9780140298482
288pp

The blurb from the publisher:

It starts with a question, a simple favor asked of a husband by his wife on an afternoon chilled by the Baltic wind while both are painting in their studio. Her portrait model has canceled, and would he mind slipping into women’s shoes and stockings for a few moments so that she can finish the painting on time? “Of course,” he answers, “Anything at all.” With that, one of the most passionate and unusual love stories of the twentieth century begins.

The Short of It:

A non-traditional love story that will stay with you long after you put it down.

The Rest of It:

I absolutely loved this novel. The novel itself was inspired by the marriage of Einar and Gerda Wegener, both artists living in Copenhagen in 1925. As Einar realizes that he is indeed a woman, seemingly trapped in a man’s body, he becomes Lili and the three of them live together as a family of sorts. At first, he dresses as Lili in the privacy of the apartment that he shares with Greta but as the weeks pass and with the support of Greta, he begins to allow Lili to take short shopping trips. After several outings, Lili is introduced as Einar’s sister and even attends a few social gatherings. As her confidence grows, Greta sees less and less of Einar and she realizes that soon her husband may not exist at all.

Ebershoff paints Einar as a very delicate creature. Here is an example:

“Einar pressed the side of his face into the pillow. He fell asleep again. There he was, Greta’s huband. With his fine skin, and his small head with the temples that dented softly, almost like a baby’s. With his nose flaring with breath. With his smell of turpentine and talc. With the skin around his eyes, red and nearly on fire. “

The love that Greta has for her husband is what encourages her to support his transformation. As afraid as she is of losing Einar, she feels that his happiness means more to her than their marriage. Once she accepts this, she begins to seek medical advice which results in Einar’s permanent gender modification. The first of its kind.

There are some very tender moments and some very difficult decisions made. Lili is surrounded by supportive friends as she completes the transformation but where does this leave Greta? Greta misses Einar yet she loves Lili and realizes that at some point, she must let Lili live her own life.

I’m telling you, this story just broke my heart but in a wonderful, “ball up your hankie and shed a tear” kind of way. This is my book club’s pick for this month (selected by me) and the meeting is tomorrow so I have to wait a day to hear what they thought of it but I am hoping that they enjoyed it as much as I did.

The other item that I want to mention is that The Danish Girl is being made into a movie and will star Nicole Kidman as Einar/Lili and Charlize Theron as Greta. How’s that for casting?

David Ebershoff also wrote The 19th Wife, which I know a lot of you have read. The Danish Girl was his first novel.

I’ll leave you with this photo of Lili Elbe: