A Summer All Her Own by Roseanne Keller
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010Before posting my ideas on job hunting, as promised, I remembered a book I had read last summer and took it out of the library again to refresh my memory. It has to do with finding your center and involves a love of painting. I thought it had application to my topic of hobbies, so I am inserting it today and then will do job hunting next.
In this book, A Summer All Her Own, a 45 year old widow decides to go to Crete to get away from what is familiar to her. The sudden death of her husband has rocked her world and she feels at loose ends.
The story is somewhat of a fantasy, because how many single women, divorced or widowed, can afford to do what Anna does in this book? But her journey into forgiveness and her release of her anger at her husband’s sudden death is worth exploring.
As a young woman, Anna was a graphic designer. Giving up her career for her husband and subsequently, her children, was a choice she made consciously. Only after her husband’s death,when she is in Crete, does she realize that the joy she had with her art has been in cold storage for too long. She starts to sketch and finds that the joy returns.
In the meantime, she meets some interesting people, two of whom help her with her struggle for forgiveness and her doubts about her artistic ability, and two who fall in love with her. (Another fantasy!) But throughout the book, I identified with her feelings of insecurity about herself, her talents, her body, her attitudes about love and sex, and in general, about the seemingly unfairness of life.
Her art becomes her passion once more and she learns quickly from her elderly Greek mentor/artist. His wife is the one who helps her come to grips with the loss of her husband, because she had also lost her first husband.
The book takes us back and forth between Athens, Greece and the island of Crete, with wonderful descriptions and interesting observations as seen through the artist eye of Anna. (Crete is south of Greece with the Sea of Crete & the Mediterranean between the mainland and the island.)
The ending is positive, if not a little more fantasy, but the book leaves you with the feeling that Anna has found out who she really is and what she really wants for herself in order to become the person she was meant to be. While she is very serious about her art and it is not a “hobby,” the passion she brings to her art gives the reader food for thought about life’s choices, including hobbies or careers.
How important to your happiness is doing something you really love? Have you abandoned it because of your marriage problems or your divorce or your children or you job? Isn’t it time to claim what you know you need to do to feel good again? The book tells us how Anna does it, and while it is fiction, it had relevance for me.
I took my copy from the local library, but it is available at Barnes & Noble and from Amazon.com, starting at $1.99 for used copies. It is published by New American Library (2006) and is the author’s debut novel, who by the way, has made several trips to Crete.
Greek Island of Crete
