Tradition

It took me a long time to write this final blog.   I finished the book almost a month ago.  The end of the story was very moving and I did not feel like I could do it justice.  The story was made up of everything a great one should be: life-like suspense, a love story that is not overpowering, a story that is believable but bigger than life,  flawed characters who you love even though you can't stand them.  I highly recommend this story: I put it on my list of best books no one has ever heard of.

Well it happened.  George's father died.  He was a stressed, working man losing all of his money in his investments. At his funeral all George could think about was how modest his family's plot looked compared to the plots of those with "new" money.... how out of control those new citizens in their town were with their spending and how inappropriate they were because they built funeral plots larger than that of the Ambersons.

Then it happened again. George's mother died.  She was meek. She had recently began spending an extraordinary time with Mr. Morgan, Lucy's father.   George ruined the love she shared with this vibrant, life-loving man, because he felt that people were "talking" and that she was behaving inappropriately.   He took her to Paris and she barely made her way back home because he wouldn't "let her" go back to Mr. Morgan.

And it happened again.  Major Amberson, George's grandfather who began it all, died.  He was old and forgetful, and depressed.  As such, he forgot to deed his home to George leaving George desolate with his Aunt Fanny in his care.

Throughout the novel, Mr. Morgan is George's foil.  He is interested in modernizing the world: he invents an automobile and isn't interested in who is "talking" about his affair with George's mother. He is a man of the times.  The opposition of their personalities and beliefs is fully demonstrated in the final moments of George's demise: He is run over by a car while crossing the street in his now dirty, highly populated city.  The type of car built by his nemesis destroys him.  He has lost his family, his fortune and almost his life.

****


Come on, let's read!