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All books
| Hannah's Dream | By Diane Coplin Hammond | |
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| The Hour I First Believed: A Novel | By Wally Lamb | |
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| The Cleft: A Novel | By Doris Lessing | |
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| The Red Scarf | By Kate Furnivall | |
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| The Nightingales of Troy: Connected Stories | By Alice Fulton | |
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| Slowness | By Milan Kundera | |
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| Indecision | By Benjamin Kunkel | |
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| Deaf Sentence | By David Lodge | |
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| Man in the Dark: A Novel | By Paul Auster | |
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Hanna's Dream is a very simple book - there's no fancy language or hard to get to metaphors. The beauty of this book is in the simplicity of the story. The writer presents everything to the reader on a dinner plate with fork and everything. I usually call these "lazy read" books, but that doesn't me ... (continue)
Hanna's Dream is a very simple book - there's no fancy language or hard to get to metaphors. The beauty of this book is in the simplicity of the story. The writer presents everything to the reader on a dinner plate with fork and everything. I usually call these "lazy read" books, but that doesn't mean that they are bad books. I enjoyed reading Hanna's Dream because like the writer, I, too, love animals. The story wasn't heart wrenching or gut stabbing, but there were parts/dialogues (especially between Sam and Corinna) that had me feeling what they felt.
My favorite character in the book was Sam. When I first asked myself who I connected to the most, and who I enjoyed reading the most, I was surprised when my mind answered: Sam. Sam is very simple in character, and yes very diverse as well. His character is believable and his dialogue is superbly written. I learned the most from him and his wife's dialogues together. It would seem to me that they are the most well rounded in the whole book.
As I read further into the book, I found the Hannah/Harriet dichotomy interesting. Harriet, the manager of the zoo, is a foster child, just like Hanna. She was neglected by Maude and told that she was ugly. In addition, she was bounced from home to home, and didn't really have anyone in her life and even in her adult life had no one to lean on.
Both characters are very similar, even though Hanna happens to be an elephant. Hanna was neglected at an early age, with her mother being murdered. She also had no one to love her, initially and even bears physical scars from someone abusing her on the ship that transported her to the zoo. She was also bounced around from owner to owner - Max, Sam, and now Neva.
I was very surprised that Harriet never realized in the book just how similar her situation was to Hanna's. She could have learned from Hanna and leaned on her. But Harriet is always too busy in the novel with trying to steal someone else's life (Max's) instead of living her own. Perhaps the lesson here is that we could all learn from animals. Also, both names start with an H, intentional perhaps?
"From her night table Harriet pulled a thick stack of unframed pictures and fingered them like rosary beads. She left on top a close-up of the face of a young elephant, its left eye mangled and swollen shut, the eyelid pulpy and weeping blood. Under the picture was written in faint pencil, OUR DEAR GIRL. The photograph was of Hannah, freshly orphaned: Hannah, Maxine's crowning achievement, the object of her final passion. A big, awkward, wounded creature who was lucky enough to be loved by a woman who saw beauty where there wasn't any. Along the bottom of the photograph was written, THE FINAL RED TAPE IS DONE, AND WE SHALL HAVE HER!"
There's also an aspect of religion in this book. Sam and Corinna lose their baby, and Corinna never really forgives God until she and Sam start believing that Hannah is their dead baby's incarnate. The message that I found here is: always hope, and always stay optimistic because God works in mysterious ways.
The book overall is a "cute" read. I label it cute because as I stated above, it's very simple and straight to the point. There's no hallways to get lost in or rocks to stumble on. It was a very quick read, and I enjoyed reading about Hannah, the elephant. Will I remember this book, 6 months from now? Probably not, unless someone sparks my memory
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