lory_enterenchanted's Reviews (582)

This is such an important topic and the research is fascinating. I would like to see more rigor in the thinking and clarity of definition around the huge areas of "empathy" and "love." While the authors made a convincing case that humans need closeness and connection to grow healthy and lead stable, productive lives, there is also such a thing as unhealthy closeness (enmeshment) and real problems that result from it. The "codependency movement" is briefly criticized at the end of the book as aiming to push people towards independence at the expense of relationship, but I think really it's all about establishing healthy boundaries and a balance between self and other. 

Anyway, there is no shortage of research to do in this field ,and I hope we'll be hearing much more about it. The main challenge we seem to face today is to expand the ways we evolved for surviving together in small, close-knit groups, into seeing ourselves as members of a global family, humanity as a whole. Many people are distressed by the hugeness of this and close themselves off in narrowly defined groups, going with the old way of feeling secure as "us" by battling a "them." Other forces are working strongly to splinter us even further, isolating and distancing us from one another and waling us off behind non-human, mechanical barriers. But the stories of healing in this book - and also the warning images of people damaged beyond repair - can inspire us to learn from the wisdom in the very structure of our brains and bodies, to recover the human bonds of love and caring that made us strong, and to evolve further into a species that uniquely is able to love out of freedom and knowledge, rather than merely by instinct.

I read this some time ago, and remember being vaguely dissatisfied, but after enjoying the recent FM Gibbons releases I wanted to go back to it again. With my expectations not so high or perhaps so divergent from the actual book, I liked it more this time. I wish there had been more of Hetty and a less depressing ending to her story, and less of Viola, a tiresome although basically blameless character.

A melancholy meditation on four "autumnal" lives - the ways in which we meet but miss one another.

It's always comforting to read Thomas Keating. This one was less focused and covered much the same territory as Open Mind Open Heart.

I've read this book multiple times and its mythic images have deeply impressed me. The image of Orual reading her "great work" at the end and seeing what she is really saying is powerful and rings true with much that I have myself experienced in life. Our true motives are so often hidden from us, and coming face to face with them can be a shattering experience. The message of hope and reconciliation at the end is reassuring and I believe also true to the way things are in the deeper reality. The divine world wants us to become worthy of standing in its presence, but we have to do some hard work to get there.

I think it's better not to see the novel as an allegory but as an imagination which embodies truths about the human soul and spirit. In that regard I think it's Lewis's finest work.

Read for the Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week at A Gallimaufry. This was quite striking as an evocation of medieval life, with all its stinks, vermin and diseases, along with the persistent human doggedness that was needed to keep people going through all that. Lively and discursive as Chaucer's pilgrims, it's not at all a conventional narrative, leading the reader along a winding road that seemingly goes off into thin air at the end.

Strangely for a story centered around a convent, there was absolutely no sense of the immanence of God nor any striving after Christian love. The primary concern of nearly everyone is money, as they struggle along to keep the convent going, preserve their small luxuries, and keep the threatening and hungry poor at bay. Not a single nun is more than mildly inoffensive, or perhaps too stupid to offend, and most of them are quite unsavory characters, up to and including a murderess. Hers is not the only sin that is never discovered or punished; in this "holy" place, the temptations of the world seem to be hiding in plain sight. I'm not sure whether this is meant as an expression of Warner's own views against religion as an empty and hypocritical exercise, or as a portrayal of the kind of corruption in the religious life that led within a couple of centuries to the Reformation. 

For me, it provided an interesting excursion, with often beautiful and highly original language, but I'm not sure what to think about the underlying message.

Modern industrialized human beings are incredibly stupid -- especially the ones who would seem to be the most highly educated, like doctors and university professors. That's the thought that came to me after reading some of the stories in this book, which demonstrate the idiocy that passes for cleverness today, doing untold harm to children and other vulnerable people, to our entire planet. And out of stupidity, evil is born: not that stupid people are necessarily evil in themselves, but the reiteration of adverse, uninformed treatment brings about increasingly adverse and evil results in an expanding circle, a snowball effect that has created the looming catastrophe we see all around us. 

We need wisdom, real wisdom and insight, to come to our aid and reverse this barrage of stupidity. Wisdom that is not cold, empty cleverness, but filled with the boundless warmth of love, and the skill and flexibility to do its work through relationships, not fixed notions, systems, and ideologies. It's the kind of wisdom that is also demonstrated in this book, which tells not just the story of the individuals concerned, but the story of Dr. Bruce Perry's learning a new way of understanding and working with human beings, a way that is truly healing.

He learned it from the children, by listening to and observing them, in an open-hearted way, without the blind prejudice of his psychiatric profession, but with the discipline of a mind trained in clear thinking. If only we could all learn to do the same; our world would be utterly transformed.

Another understatedly comic novel from Barbara Pym, this one with a number of self-referential "metafictional" touches -- the people (who don't know they are characters in a novel) talk about how different things would be if they were in a novel, and so forth. One of Pym's own books is found in a bookcase, characters from a previous novel make a brief appearance, and an unnamed woman novelist visits a hotel the characters are frequenting (and who else could it be but Pym herself?). I've enjoyed all the novels from Pym's first publishing phase, and will now take a break before tackling the ones published after her long exile from the literary scene.

A subtle, funny-sad comedy of relationships.

Reading Paula Byrne's biography gave me the urge to read all of Barbara Pym's books. I'd only read the first three, so I started this binge with her fourth published novel, and enjoyed it very much. It's set among a circle of anthropologists and anthropology students, a slyly humorous way of getting us to stand back from our mating rituals and social customs and regard them for the oddities they are. Though she's frequently compared to Jane Austen, JA (for all her wit and humor) has a kind of high moral earnestness that I find Pym sidesteps quite deftly. She sees us as "less than angels," indeed, and yet still conveys the warm appreciation of humanity that shines through all the best comic writing. I'm definitely glad I followed my impulse and will be reading more Pym soon.