Soul - Tobsha Learner
In nineteenth-century Britain, young Lavinia Huntington's older husband appreciates her lively intellect and seems eager to extend his wife's education from his study to their bedroom. Lavinia absorbs all he has to teach and glories in the birth of their son.
In twenty-first-century Los Angeles, Julia Huntington studies the human genome, seeking the origins of human emotion. As passionate about her marriage to her beloved Klaus as she is about her life's work, Julia is delighted to discover that she is pregnant.
Separated by nearly 150 years, Lavinia and Julia suffer the same shock when their men abandon them. Their powerful love becomes painful hate; their intense passion transforms into icy logic. The genes of the Huntington women have formed their emotions - now their life experiences drive them to make decisions that they, and those they love, may long regret.
This is one of those books where the blurb doesn't entirely accurately describe what actually happens in the book. The sort that sometimes make you wonder if somebody wrote the blurb based on an initial draft or concept that got altered by the time the book was published, and no one bothered to update the blurb. Chief among the inconsistencies is the fact that Lavinia's husband never actually leaves her. Abandons her emotionally, yes, but he never actually leaves her. Or maybe even more than that, we never really see any evidence of his alleged eagerness to teach his wife in the bedroom. Almost from day one when we're introduced to them as a couple, he's distant, so it's hard to really feel the same sadness at the increasing estrangement as you can with Julia and Klaus, because they seem pretty tight until he up and leaves. There are clues, for us at least, but you actually get the sense that he cares about her before he goes. As a result of this, the Lavinia story got fairly tiresome fairly quickly, with just more and more of the same "why doesn't my husband love me?" over and over.
Ultimately, this book wasn't terrible, but it was not what I was expecting, and thus kind of a disappointment.
Next up: Most likely either The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal, or Operation Typhoon Shore, by Joshua Mowll.
In twenty-first-century Los Angeles, Julia Huntington studies the human genome, seeking the origins of human emotion. As passionate about her marriage to her beloved Klaus as she is about her life's work, Julia is delighted to discover that she is pregnant.
Separated by nearly 150 years, Lavinia and Julia suffer the same shock when their men abandon them. Their powerful love becomes painful hate; their intense passion transforms into icy logic. The genes of the Huntington women have formed their emotions - now their life experiences drive them to make decisions that they, and those they love, may long regret.
This is one of those books where the blurb doesn't entirely accurately describe what actually happens in the book. The sort that sometimes make you wonder if somebody wrote the blurb based on an initial draft or concept that got altered by the time the book was published, and no one bothered to update the blurb. Chief among the inconsistencies is the fact that Lavinia's husband never actually leaves her. Abandons her emotionally, yes, but he never actually leaves her. Or maybe even more than that, we never really see any evidence of his alleged eagerness to teach his wife in the bedroom. Almost from day one when we're introduced to them as a couple, he's distant, so it's hard to really feel the same sadness at the increasing estrangement as you can with Julia and Klaus, because they seem pretty tight until he up and leaves. There are clues, for us at least, but you actually get the sense that he cares about her before he goes. As a result of this, the Lavinia story got fairly tiresome fairly quickly, with just more and more of the same "why doesn't my husband love me?" over and over.
Ultimately, this book wasn't terrible, but it was not what I was expecting, and thus kind of a disappointment.
Next up: Most likely either The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal, or Operation Typhoon Shore, by Joshua Mowll.