Good Reads / Community Library Notes
A Piece of the World
Christina Baker Kline
Review by Priscilla Comen
A Piece of the World
Christina Baker Kline
Review by Priscilla Comen
A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline is the story of Andrew Wyeth’s painting of the girl in the grass with an old house in the background. Everyone knows who Andrew Wyeth is. No one knows the woman in the grass, This book is about her; Christina Olson.
As in Kline’s first novel, “Orphan Train”, the author weaves fact and fiction together to create a wonderful story of family, despair, and humanness. Christina’s ancestors were the Hathorns who judged the witch women in Salem, Mass, then fled to Maine. The stories passed from generation to generation. When Christina’s only friend Betsy, comes to visit, she brings a twenty-two year old young man with her. He is the son of the man who illustrated “Treasure Island” which every American boy has read and re-read. His name is Andy, and he and Betsy become engaged after a short time.
He brings his painting supplies to the attic to paint scenes of field and sky. He spends hours with his watercolors. Christina is crippled which the doctors know nothing about curing. She would love to go on with her studies and become a teacher, but her father and mother say she is needed to help around the farm with her three brothers. Al is her favorite and they play together as best she can. She collects eggs, starts the fire in the mornings, cooks breakfast, bakes bread, makes beds and soap, and sews her own clothes on her mother’s old sewing machine. Author Kline helps us to see all this.
Her grandmother who once traveled the world with her husband, feels Christina should have a wider life, with her fine brain and her curiosity.
One day, a man named Walton comes to the house with other friends. Christina and he are attracted to each other, although he’s only there for the summer. (He attends Harvard the rest of the year.) They go sailing, have picnics, and discuss current events.
After four years of this, her parents and friends wonder aloud what his intentions are. Christine is afraid to question him. He is evasive.
Meanwhile Andy’s father dies in an auto accident, and Andy becomes more solemn and questions his own paintings. He paints everything around the house: farm implements, cracked doors, and her brother Al. Author Kline writes this love story as if she’s painting a portrait too. Christine saves all of Walton’s letters from Harvard even after he tells her his parents want him to marry a well-educated, well-placed girl.
Christine’s father is confined to his wheelchair with arthritis and her younger brother Sam gets married on the field. They are offered 50,000 dollars for the property, but her mother turns it down. Father has lost all his savings, but they scrimp and make do.
Although the house has no electricity and no running water, and the paint is peeling, it has been their beloved home for several generations. Christina becomes an older, crippled woman, without husband or children. She falls into the ditch at the side of the road, is bruised and humiliated. Author Kline make us feel for Christina, not pity, but sympathy for her solitary life, Christina’s world.
Find this beautiful book on the new fiction shelf of your community library.
As in Kline’s first novel, “Orphan Train”, the author weaves fact and fiction together to create a wonderful story of family, despair, and humanness. Christina’s ancestors were the Hathorns who judged the witch women in Salem, Mass, then fled to Maine. The stories passed from generation to generation. When Christina’s only friend Betsy, comes to visit, she brings a twenty-two year old young man with her. He is the son of the man who illustrated “Treasure Island” which every American boy has read and re-read. His name is Andy, and he and Betsy become engaged after a short time.
He brings his painting supplies to the attic to paint scenes of field and sky. He spends hours with his watercolors. Christina is crippled which the doctors know nothing about curing. She would love to go on with her studies and become a teacher, but her father and mother say she is needed to help around the farm with her three brothers. Al is her favorite and they play together as best she can. She collects eggs, starts the fire in the mornings, cooks breakfast, bakes bread, makes beds and soap, and sews her own clothes on her mother’s old sewing machine. Author Kline helps us to see all this.
Her grandmother who once traveled the world with her husband, feels Christina should have a wider life, with her fine brain and her curiosity.
One day, a man named Walton comes to the house with other friends. Christina and he are attracted to each other, although he’s only there for the summer. (He attends Harvard the rest of the year.) They go sailing, have picnics, and discuss current events.
After four years of this, her parents and friends wonder aloud what his intentions are. Christine is afraid to question him. He is evasive.
Meanwhile Andy’s father dies in an auto accident, and Andy becomes more solemn and questions his own paintings. He paints everything around the house: farm implements, cracked doors, and her brother Al. Author Kline writes this love story as if she’s painting a portrait too. Christine saves all of Walton’s letters from Harvard even after he tells her his parents want him to marry a well-educated, well-placed girl.
Christine’s father is confined to his wheelchair with arthritis and her younger brother Sam gets married on the field. They are offered 50,000 dollars for the property, but her mother turns it down. Father has lost all his savings, but they scrimp and make do.
Although the house has no electricity and no running water, and the paint is peeling, it has been their beloved home for several generations. Christina becomes an older, crippled woman, without husband or children. She falls into the ditch at the side of the road, is bruised and humiliated. Author Kline make us feel for Christina, not pity, but sympathy for her solitary life, Christina’s world.
Find this beautiful book on the new fiction shelf of your community library.