Pushing 36 and still a romantic….

I’ve never denied being a romantic. I like to be given flowers. I cry at films. Other than a few bitter and hormone-deficient days when I feel like slapping them, I smile at young couples canoodling in public. And all the rest…I just hadn’t realised how much of a romantic I still am…I actually had tears in my eyes reading a book today.

The book? Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani (http://www.adrianatrigiani.com/). Not many sentences you want to read and re-read again because the way the words are put together has an unexpected and thrilling beauty. Things start rather slow and move on rather too quickly towards the end. And, to be honest, even though the book was recommended by a friend whose literary taste I respect, I wasn’t impressed with it at the beginning.

But there is a level of truthfulness that is hard to come by and that makes it more worthwhile a read than many books which have those sentences of rare beauty and plots of impeccable tightness. This book has warmth that makes the reader feel not alone in the world.

The heroine, Ave Maria, a 35 year old ‘spinster’, is more real than another single heroine, Bridget Jones (two recent references to this feeble excuse of a woman in this site – promise you won’t see many more!) . At the height of the ‘BJ’ hype, I remember thinking I didn’t know anyone that scatter brain. But I know many (including myself) at times ‘deceptively’ strong women like Ave Maria. Here is what I mean in the author’s own words:

“What has happened to me? I get so afraid now. I never used to. Why am I more vulnerable now than I was when I was alone, in charge of everything? I lived by myself in the middle of town, for God’s sake. I checked my own oil, lit my own furnace, caught mice. I had a routine: running a home, a business, the Rescue Squad, the Drama. I was never scared then. So much for strength in numbers, I think as I look at my husband, now that we are a family.”
(What she is afraid of is something bad happening to her husband, her happiness.)

I say ‘deceptively’ not because women can’t be strong but because sometimes we confuse being strong with being able to deal with everything on our own. Strength is not in being able to do everything single handed but being able to let go once in a while; to let one's self be vulnerable.

Well, I cried toward the end of the book – not only because Ave Maria realises the above definition of strength but because that means that she finally lets go and says ‘yes’ to the proposition of the man who loves her. Aaaaaahhhhhhh….

Actually I take back what I said about Adriana Trigiani. She does have a way with words…a very subtle way. By the time the quiet hero of the book makes his last declaration of love (which I would have loved to write here just to show its simple beauty had I wanted to spoil it for would-be readers) you will be there with them, with your heart in your mouth (is that the expression?).

And let’s face it, at this day and age, there are not many occasions that get your heart that far up!