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Coming Up For Air
Coming Up For Air
Sarah Leipciger | 2020 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Coming Up For Air is a really interesting book, in that it gives a life to the face of the resuscitation dummy, Resusci Anne. The original mask was the death mask of a suicide victim in Paris in 1899, and Leipciger tells the background story of a girl who decides to take her own life when her life becomes unbearable.

We also meet the Norwegian toy maker who designs Resusci Anne, and the things that happened in his life that brought him to that point. His is an equally sad story, and although he has been fictionalised, he has been based om the real man who made the doll.

The third story is that of a Canadian girl with cystic fibrosis, and her journey from childhood up until she becomes a journalist as an adult.

This is a book about transformations: the French maid is transformed in to a mask that will be recognised around the world over a hundred years after her death; a toy maker is transformed after the death of his beloved son, into someone who tries to ensure that everyone has the ability for such things not to happen again; and a woman with cystic fibrosis has a literal transformation with the promise of renewed, transplanted lungs.

This novel sucked me in to all three lives and times. Both the French girls and the child’s death devastated me, and the Canadian woman’s story was one of hope (although I was pretty much dreading the idea that something bad would happen to her).

I loved this book, and I feel lucky to have read it. I would most definitely recommend it.
  
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Suswatibasu (1701 KP) rated Jane Eyre in Books

Oct 10, 2017 (Updated Oct 10, 2017)  
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë, Stevie Davies | 2006 | Fiction & Poetry
4
8.2 (58 Ratings)
Book Rating
Struggled with her so-called pioneering female character
I know, it's rather shocking - I am not a big fan of Jane Eyre. Having read it at school and analysed it to death, it made me realise how much I hated her character (apologies to the fans). She is seen to be 'ahead of her time' for leaving and attempting to forge her own life, yet she falls for Rochester's charms, allowing his wife (the mad woman in the attic) to burn to death. To be fair, I struggle with most period books because of its lack of pro-feminist content.
  
I quite hated the ending of Enterprise. Trip was one of my favorite characters, and his sudden death under odd circumstances annoyed me. I'm so grateful to have found this book, bring Trip back for me. Though I don't like his new life of secrecy, he is at least still alive. I liked the exploration in the bonds between Trip and T'pol, and Shran and Jhamel, and the overall history cover up of Trip's death that Nog and Jake discovered. It did reminisce "These are the voyages..." a bit with Jake and Nog, but I thought it was a clever transition.