I’m a big fan of the recurring NPR segment “Three Books.” However, until recently, I never actually grouped books I had read into categories of three. But after reading The Help, I found myself thinking of two other stories that touched me deeply and thought they would well be represented in this format.
The first story, Brokeback Mountain by E. Annie Proulx, is probably more familiar to most as a movie. I never did see the movie because the book was almost too awful to experience. Sparse prose and a desolate backdrop magnified the feelings exchanged between two unsuspecting cowhands. Truth was found on the hilltops; the lies revealed only down below. The despair of loneliness made one man hard, the other could only succumb to its emptiness. A painful tale of a love that was not allowed to be.
The Grandmothers by Doris Lessing also deals with an illicit love, but its secret was shared and collectively hidden from view. Spoiler alert: Two women, best friends since childhood who have raised their sons together, unexpectedly end up having affairs with the other’s son. Everyone is happy with the arrangement, but four lives are stuck in this secret, frozen in time. The truest act of love, undertaken by the mothers, was to cut it off and the devastating results were nearly fatal. The irony was that the sacrifice was not enough to save those involved, making one wonder, why was it done in the first place?
The Help by Kathryn Stockett, which divulged the secrets of a segregated South, dealt with a tough subject, yes. But the piece which ripped me to shreds was the total apathy and indifference of a mother to her young daughter, and the ultimate impact that would have on her. I sobbed thinking of the nanny who loved the child like her own, but knew that one day this child would become her hate-filled mother.
The three stories are linked in their revelations of illicit, forbidden love, the joy and purity that exists despite of and not because it is verboten, and the utter despair, loneliness and futility that accompanies it.
Is it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? Is the pain of a broken heart worth the joy preceding it? These questions have stayed with me like a deep wound I myself sustained upon entering the worlds of these three stories. I can never return to life before these three stories. But then again, I’m not sure I want to.
treadmillmusings 