Necessary Sins (Darling)

[cahn]

4/5. I must confess that I read this book for the wrong reasons. It's a memoir of a woman, a journalist, who had an affair with another (married) journalist, who eventually divorced his wife and married her. Some years later, he died of cancer. That's the book I thought I was reading.

The book I actually read had that basic plot, but it was about love and building a family (and breaking one, too), and most of all, life. And it had that quality of truth, of both telling the truth and discerning the truth, that makes me fall in love with a book.

Here is one example, something that just hit me as yes. Yes, this is the way things are:

The next day he slept late, and I left the house early, determined to find fresh sorrel leaves. I had recently bought a cookbook, my first, and in it I had come across a beautiful photograph of cream of sorrel soup, green and elegant in a gilt-edged cream-colored bowl. I had never even heard of sorrel. I can't explain it now -- I couldn't explain it then -- but I had this idea that if I could just make the perfect bowl of cream of sorrel soup, then I would be the kind of person who could fit into this new life, I would be competent and know the things it was important for adults to know.

This book is somewhat excruciating to read. I mean, refer to the first paragraph to see why. But it is extremely lovely.