I do like the cover, but I am not sure if the title truly fits but I can't imagine another one....

Truly, this book has helped with my slump.  Very interesting, very compelling, totally different.

The soundtrack running through my head is Vance Joy's "Riptide"... it keeps looping in my mind and playing it a few times hasn't really helped.

Again, it is interesting how certain books seem to come along at certain times.  Sometimes there is a message, or a reason why it has come along at this certain moment of time.  I suspect this could be one of those kind of books - especially since it delves so much in to family history, and breaking free and creating a new history. The whimsical part of my really liked this book - it fits with the theme perhaps of the 'other' worldly a lot of  my reading has taken me in the past year.  I get the feeling this is another polarizing book that will either draw you in or you will never become a part of it.

I like the idea of being practical from this novel - that it brings strength, and a clear head, and an ability to weather a storm.  This is a book about family, and choices, and how our paths can intersect until a circle is closed (for lack of a better analogy) to break free from the past.  It is about circuses, and oddities, family, and love. It is about appearances that can be deceiving, and about life on the margins, and creating family out of nothing. Very interesting.

I like this booked in ways that I can't always articulate.

This is a quote from one of the last pages, as the crisis passes, it strikes a chord with me as I am working on figuring out how to move forward with my mom, and my family, and how do we carve a different path from the one we have walked for almost the  last decade.  It is time to start a new cycle, and a different kind of caring within our family love:

"I am not used to being carried, but there are obligations  that come with family, letting them care for you when they need to...We carry our families like anchors, rooting us in storms, making sure we never drift from where and who we are.  We carry our families within us the way we carry our breath underwater, keeping us afloat, keeping us alive.  I've been lifting anchors since I was eighteen.  I've been holding my breath since I was born." (p330).

It is funny, I rushed to the last dozen pages, and then I stumbled my way through them - breaking to distract myself that it was almost done.  At least I have a book waiting for me at the library - tonight I will need to take this one back, and fetch myself a new one.

And turning to the last page, we reach the point of where the title comes in to it's own for this book... especially about family and personal histories... "'sometimes we'll make it up.  The first secret about history is how much of it is conjecture.' He shrugs. 'And we'll fill in spaces.  They were good at inventing themselves.'... she knows that her name will find its way in to his speculations.  So will his. Because there are things you do for people you've known your whole life.  You let them save you, you put them in your books, and you let each other begin again, clean." (p339).