This month’s book club selection is The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman. The only other book I’ve read by Ms. Wiseman is The Plum Tree, though she has two others: What She Left Behind and Coal River. Her books feature female protagonists placed in heart-wrenching circumstances who somehow learn to survive and grow.
The Life She Was Given is about two people: Lilly Blackwood, a young Albino girl whose mother sells her to the circus during the Great Depression, and Julia Blackwood, a young woman who has run away from home in the mid-1950s to escape her controlling and unkind mother.
For anyone who hasn’t read the book, I won’t put out any spoilers, but you may want to avoid reading the questions below until you’ve had a chance to read it.
I have mixed feelings about the book. I think Ellen Marie Wiseman is an extremely skilled and gifted writer and she has a way with words that I can almost assure you will bring tears to your eyes (if not a gushing flood of emotion). That being said, this story pushed me a little too far out of my comfort zone. I actually skipped one whole chapter because I knew what was going to happen and I just couldn’t bring myself to read it. I have to say I’ve never done that before.
For those of you who read it, what did you think? What were your overall impressions? And if you read the book, can you guess the chapter I skipped?
Here are the questions for this month, some of which I borrowed and/or tweaked from the back of The Life She Was Given:
- When Lilly left Blackwood Manor after ten years of never setting foot outside the attic, were you surprised by how quickly she acclimated to life on the outside? Did you expect her to have more developmental problems given the isolation of her first ten years?
- What is the author trying to say, if anything, about religion in The Life She Was Given?
- Why do you think Momma and Father were unkind to Julia, when their stated intention was to give her the life her mother had never had?
- Do you think Momma loved Lilly, or was her attitude toward her daughter based on something else?
- Do you think Lilly could have survived on her own if she had escaped from Momma on the way to the circus?
- What are your feelings about Lilly’s father?
- The parallels between Lilly’s life and that of the elephants and other animals are many and obvious. How did you feel when Jojo was taken from Pepper?
- What do you think of Claude? Do you think he did the right thing by keeping to himself during the time after Lilly disappeared? Do you think he was right not to share his knowledge with Julia?
- Do you think the title, The Life She Was Given, specifically refers to Lilly? Did you think it could refer to Julia, too?
- Have you ever been to the circus? What is your opinion of circuses?
Next month’s book is The Alice Network by Kate Quinn. It’s a story about a college student looking for a cousin in France after WWII who is joined by a former spy from WWI. I’m excited to read this one!
Until next time,
Amy
Reade and Write 