The Way the Crow Flies – Miriam Drori, Author

Update on The Way the Crow Flies

Before I begin this update, I must tell you that today is publication day for Loyalty and the Learner, my second Jerusalem Murder Mystery.

You can find the ebook on Amazon and the paperbook on Amazon and on several other online bookshops.

Back to the crow…

I’m ashamed to say that I’m still reading The Way the Crow Flies, which I blogged about on 21st July. My excuse is that it’s 720 pages long, I’ve been extraordinarily busy and I read slowly.

In the previous post, I was stopped by something I quoted from page 187. This time, I was stopped by this on page 632 (I have advanced):

Why do grown-ups insist on childhood “innocence”? It’s a static quality, but children are in flux, they grow, they change. The grown-ups want them to carry that precious thing they believe they too once had. And the children do carry it, because they are very strong. The problem is, they know. And they will do anything to protect the grown-ups from knowledge. The child knows that the grown-up values innocence, and the child assumes that this is because the grown-up is innocent and therefore must be protected from the truth. And if the ignorant grown-up is innocent, then the knowing child must be guilty.

Wow. Thank you for that, Ann-Marie MacDonald. It explains a lot.

What’s the Job of an Author?

I’m reading a 720-page book by an author I didn’t know: Ann-Marie MacDonald. It’s one of the few books I saved from the large pile I gave away before moving, and I’m so glad I did. The book is called

The Way the Crow Flies

One of the things I love about this book is the way the author comes up with thoughts that make me think

Wow, I never thought of it that way before!

Wow, that’s so true!

So far, I’ve only read up to page 187 and this author has managed to do this to me several times. But this time, on page 187, I had to stop reading for some extra reflection.

It’s 1962 on an air force base in Canada, and Jack, one of the main characters has just realised that one of his neighbours, who comes from Germany, is Jewish. In fact, from his eight-year-old daughter, although he hasn’t revealed to her the meaning of the tattoo on his arm, he knows that the neighbour was in a concentration camp.

Jack finds himself replaying conversations with Henry Froelich. Einstein is a Jew. It had sounded anti-Semitic from Froelich’s lips last summer. Of course there is nothing wrong with the word “Jew” – especially if you are one – but there is something about the single syllable, it sounds less polite than “Jewish”. Perhaps the noun sounds anti-Semitic because Jack has rarely heard it pronounced by people other than anti-Semites.

It’s so true. It was true in 1962, and in 2003 when the book was first published, and it’s just as true now. But I’ve never thought about it before. It makes me think of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, but that was written a long time ago and many words have had their meanings changed since then:

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

Coming back to Ann-Marie MacDonald, I think this is an important job of authors: to point out truths that readers have glossed over and not considered properly before. Of course, not all novels do this, nor do they have to, but I love it when they do.

It’s taken me a long time to reach page 187. I hope I can find more time for this book and the rest goes more quickly. It’s so well-written.