Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking : Aoibheann Sweeney
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Miranda's father has always seemed to her as elusive and impenetrable as the thick New England fog that surrounds their isolated home. Just after she was born, her parents moved from chaotic Manhattan to a tiny sea-misted island off the coast of Maine so that her father could work on his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Not long after, her mother took the boat out, disappeared into the fog, and never came back. Miranda grew up in the lonely house on Crab Island caring for her brilliant but troubled father and sustaining herself with fantasies fueled by stories of ill-fated, lustful nymphs and vengeful gods that he read to her from his manuscript.
Serious and soulful, her only true friend was Mr. Blackwell -- a fisherman who helped her father adjust to life on the island all those years ago, and whose relationship with him is -- like so much else about her father -- complicated and mysterious.
When Miranda graduates from high school, her father announces that he has arranged for her to travel to Manhattan to stay with friends from his old life, and Miranda embarks on a journey from one kind of island to another -- a journey that will finally reveal the truth about her father's past and open up her world in ways she cannot begin to imagine.
This is a classic coming-of-age story modernized and skillfully brought up-to-date with familiar settings and recognizable characters. I especially enjoyed the parallel as it developed in the book; as we made the acquaintance of the main character, she seems especially timeless, as if her life were set in some other, distant century. I don't know if this was intentional on the part of the author, but I really felt the change in the character and in the setting of the book as she leaves her oddly out-of-time early life to enter the real, the modern world of Manhattan, with it's technology and bustling modern life.
You get a real feeling that she only really awakens once she reaches Manhattan, not unlike some of the characters from her father's manuscript. The author revisits many of the ancient myths, illustrating and illuminating her characters with stories and ideas from the very manuscript that so consumes the main character's father. Metamorphosis is an idea that fills the pages of the book, both literally and figuratively, as our young main character comes to life and discovers her own place in life, in love and in family even as she discovers insights into her father and his past, answering in herself questions that have haunted and pained her.
I lost myself in this book; the classical themes and the updated settings truly opening the main character's life to my mind and my heart. I felt her struggles and her fear as well as her loneliness; I rejoiced in her discoveries and mourned for her losses. I related deeply with many of her choices and found bits of myself in every page of the book. I commend Ms. Sweeney for a novel whose story belongs not only to her character, but to the reader as well. Well done!
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Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (July 19, 2007)
ISBN-10: 1594201307
ISBN-13: 978-1594201301
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