Elias Canetti escribió que en escasas ocasiones las personas logran liberarse de las cadenas que las atan para, inmediatamente después, quedar sujetas a otras nuevas. Mary, una niña de quince años que vive con su familia en una granja de la Inglaterra rural de 1830, tiene el pelo del color de la leche y nació con un defecto físico en una pierna, pero logra escapar momentáneamente de su condena familiar cuando es enviada a trabajar como criada para cuidar a la mujer del vicario, que está enferma. Entonces, tiene la oportunidad de aprender a leer y escribir, de dejar de ver «sólo un montón de rayas negras» en los libros. Sin embargo, conforme deja el mundo de las sombras, descubre que las luces pueden resultar incluso más cegadoras, por eso, a Mary sólo le queda el poder de contar su historia para tratar de encontrar sosiego en la palabra escrita.

This story has only one possible arc, though the details and mode are telling and worth being flung into the inevitable. It makes Tess of the d'Urbervilles
seem hopelessly romantic. ( )

What an astonishingly good read.

I CHECKED THIS EBOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. SUPPORT YOUR LIBRARIES, FOLKS! THEY NEED US TO USE THEIR SERVICES!

ALL SPOILERS...ALL THE TIME...SPOILERS BELOW! THE PHOBIC ARE WARNED OFF!

My Review: First, read this:

this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand.

in this year of lord eighteen hundred and thirty one i am reached the age of fifteen and i am sitting by my window and i can see many things. i can see birds and they fill the sky with their cries. i can see the trees and i can see the leaves.

and each leaf has veins which run down it.

and the bark of each tree has cracks.

i am not very tall and my hair is the colour of milk.

my name is mary and i have learned to spell it. m. a. r. y. that is how you letter it.

I am utterly besotted with this book. My bookish friend Katie is the one who gets the blame, I mean credit!, for convincing me to try the read. It is short, and it has something I can't describe to you adequately that rings me like a bell. I think, I guess, it's a sense of the passionate urgency Mary feels in learning her letters...like that act, that piece of knowledge, will transform her, will make everything Different. If nothing else, it will give her a leg up on her noxious sister Beatrice.

Her life, Mary's, is about what you expect a woman's life to be at that time and in that class. It is nasty, brutish, and turns out to be short. It is simple, and it is without ornament. It is, in short, a titanic waste of the brain of a clever woman like Mary. As her story begins, she is sold by her father to the local vicar as a caretaking maid-of-all-work for the vicar's housekeeper. His wife is terminally ill, and there's no one whose job it is...no child, no sibling...to muck in and do the labor of cleaning the invalid, her bedding, keeping her as entertained as possible; the housekeeper needs the extra hands. The vicar? Men did not (and do not, by and large) do that sort of work.

Mary's waspish, direct honesty isn't easy. Not for her...it leads those around her to anger, more often than not...and not for the world she lives in. Making honest observations about the facts of life is not a fast way to make squads of pals. Mary's sisters don't much like her, her mother can't be arsed to care about much that isn't making her husband the drunken shit as happy as possible, and Mary's grandfather (her father's father) is crippled by an accident so despite his pleasure in her company he isn't much help to Mary in navigating the world.

What happens as Mary assumes her duties in the vicar's household is the oldest story in the world. She's raped. She isn't, however, going to put up with that, and that's what makes this story a five-star read for me. Mary serves up her revenge and takes her punishmnet with her eyes open, her chin up, and her heart unburdened by regret.

I fell in love with Mary from page one. If you read the above quote, which is from the beginning of the book, and do not feel the appeal, are not vibrating with the language's power, then skip the read. It won't get better...the story's really simple, it's unsurprising, and it's only half the point. The other half is the storytelling, the sense of being there with Mary. We're hearing a voice that shouldn't have reached us from a person who didn't matter when she was alive so she wouldn't have been allowed to leave a record after her death.

It's such a simple tale. It's such an oft-told tale. It's a beauty, because it's got something extra, a little trick up its sleeve, that thing that makes a story taller in the saddle. The risk is how many people will be put off by it. They will find it a gimmick, but I found the storytelling an enhancement of an otherwise unremarkable story a young woman writing about her unhappy, unjust, and in the end short life of work, abuse, work, abuse, rape, punishment; it's lifted to its next, finer level. It's about Mary's indomitable will, her absolute uncompromising need for More. I resonate to that story. The other, I don't.

And that's why I love it, instead of merely thinking it was an interesting, not always successful, stylistic experiment. (How does Mary know how to spell some of the complicated words she uses, eg "hierarchy"?) The effort to bring an unpolished and unmediated voice to life is doomed to artificiality, of course, since this is fiction and not a research project. But the mannerisms were successful in breathing life into a character whose essential reality overcame, for this testy old reader, the inevitable awareness of the story as construct, as artifact.

So I'll shout my thanks westward to my friend in New Jersey...the same one who warbled me into reading The Mercy Seat!...whose recommendation of the story was sufficiently enthusiastic as to make my read necessary. Thank goodness my library had an ebook available. I would've been much the poorer for not having Mary along for the ride into the rest of my reading life.

A story, a character, a book like this is a treasure. Get it, if you can. ( )

Poco menos de 200 páginas para contar una historia terrible, y seguro que no única, de la mano y la escritura de una mujer fuerte, segura y sincera. Mary, quince años, coja y albina, que nos permite ser testigos de su aprendizaje y de como labra, lo que le dejan, de su vida, de la que finalmente es la dueña.

"escribir lleva mucho tiempo, hay que deletrear y copiar cada palabra encima de la página, y cuando termino tengo que volver a mirar para ver si las he elegido bien. y algunos días tengo que pararme porque tengo que pensar en qué es lo que tengo que decir, y en qué es lo que quiero decir. y en por qué lo estoy diciendo. y tardo más tiempo en escribir sobre algo que ha pasado que lo que tardó en pasar.
pero tengo que escribir rápido porque no tengo mucho tiempo" ( )

It has been a long time since I finished a book in 24 hours. This one had me hooked from the beginning:

"this is my books and i am writing it by my own hand.
in this year of lord eighteen hundred and thirty-one i am reached the age of fifteen and i am sitting by my window and i can see many things. i can see birds and they fill the sky with their cries. i can see the tree and i can see the leaves.
and each leaf has veins that run down it.
and the bark of each tree is cracked.
i am not very tall and my hair is the colour of milk.
my name is mary and that is how i have learned to spell it. m.a.r.y. that is how you letter it.

i want to tell you what it is that happened but i must be ware not to run at it like the heifers at the gate for it i do that i will get ahead of myself so quick that i will trip and fall and any way you will want me to start where a person ought to.

and that is at the beginning."

Mary is one of the most intriguing characters I've come across in a long time. She is one of four daughters of a struggling farmer who, because they have no brothers, spend their days working in the fields. Mary was born with a deformed leg, which her father never hesitates to complain about since she can't work as quickly as the others. As the opening lines reveal, she is passionate about the farm, the animals, and the surrounding landscape. When the local vicar seeks a servant to help care for the house and his ailing wife, Mary's father is happy to send her away (and to take payment for her services). Mary has no desire to leave the farm and her family--especially her grandfather, who is ignored by the rest of them--but she does as she is told. Despite the hardships and abuse she has suffered, she is an incredibly confident young woman who speaks her mind, no matter what anyone thinks. Yet the vicar and his wife take to her, even seeming to be charmed by her forthrightness.

Mary's book recounts a year in her life in four sections, each named for a season. Each begins with a variation of the passage above. She lives a simple life, accepting what comes along and recording her observations and thoughts. It's difficult to describe just what it is that makes her so engaging; perhaps a combination of stoicism and guilelessness? And the wonderful voice that the author gives her, a voice that speaks poetry without even knowing it. Some readers may find her descriptions of housework and conversations boring, but I was completely captivated. Despite the rather slow pace, the novel does work up to an unexpected climax, one that leaves the reader shaken. But Mary carries on.

I don't want to give too much away, but I hope others will give this beautiful character-driven novel a chance. I will be looking for other works by this author. ( )