I really enjoyed the beginning of this, but as the book continued, my interest started to wane. I was intermittently connected to the characters and well enjoyed the book within a book that reminded me of Frankenstein. The story itself didn’t totally capture me. There are some parallels here with the nature writing and the wildness of the growing up in nature to Where the Crawdads Sing. 

The story begins with a conversation between a man and a woman and continue with the man’s reflections on his childhood friend. In fact, this structure also has some connections to To Kill a Mockingbird, but yet again, the story wasn’t quite as compulsive. I don’t know if it’s that my taste for quiet novels just isn’t present at the moment with so much going on in the world or if I don’t really really like them anymore, about this characters reflections childhood friendship, or lost love just wasn’t doing it for me. Antonia immigrates from Bohemia to western Nebraska, where Jim and his family live. together, they discover the attractions of nature and develop strong friendship so especially after Jim‘s parents die. I didn’t feel included in the friendship which I think is what I’m looking for when I read these interior novels. I listened to the episode of Novel Pairings podcast. While usually those episodes really help me connect to the text and understand it and explore it on a different level, this episode was much more a discussion of their previous experiences with the novel (especially because they had a guest who was one of Sara’s former students) rather than the novel itself.