Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

At our book club meeting last night, a question was posed about how we view ourselves through other people's eyes. I once wrote about labels and how obsessed our society is about confining us to our assumed roles and identities. We even put ourselves in debt trying to fit into these assumptions by driving the "best" cars, and making sure we were in a "better" neighborhood, and ensuring our children have the "best" education by enrolling them only in the "highly esteemed" private schools. Labels follow us where we are in life. Christina Olson had labels following her: a sick child, the dutiful daughter, the spinster. I'm sure there are other "colorful" labels that I can put on her but one thing about this woman, and her seemingly sad existence were her choices (or lack thereof) that led up to a fateful meeting with artist Andrew Wyeth. In our life, we demand a few things, and one of them is to be known. It doesn't necessarily have to be to the world, but to be known to the people around us. In our everyday, we put up fences around ourselves, and pretend we're better than we believe, and cast on different roles to change the labels people already had assigned us. What if someone takes all of our pretentiousness, or looks past at our ordinary and sees us. Sees us the way we can only hope to be. And in Andrew, Christina becomes one thing - a story; a painting with layers of wisdom, hurts, regrets, suffering. Her life isn't a blank canvas as much as it's a history lesson. I've never read any of Christina Baker Kline's work but after this, I'm going to pick up a few more. This was moving, and in her descriptions, I was there at the farm, looking on at the sky, the dilapidated house, the sea, the woman with her back turned to me. In her words, I walk into the Olson home, see the lessons written in pictures, in old chests, in seashells, and forget about the labels I put on this woman in the famous painting, but take in all that is her. Through both Kline and Wyeth's eyes, Christina is not only seen and known, but we, the reader and art patrons, are given a glimpse and a piece of (her) world.