Impressed by one of her previous novels The Love Letter that was adopted both by a Hollywood movie as well as a Japanese film, I picked up She Is Me from the library. I must have read The Love Letter some ten years ago so I was eager to find out if She Is Me is as good.
When I read a book, I usually try to look out for something fresh. In a way, the narration changes from the grumpy grandma Lotte, to mother Greta who never complained leaving the people around her having to anticipate her needs, and finally to Greta’s daughter Elizabeth who has a son Harry and insisted to stay out of marriage.
Grandma Lotte was dying of skin cancer and Elizabeth has quited her job as a professor and took up screenplay writing in order to stay with her grandmother. To Elizabeth, marriage is the cause of adultery because if there is no marriage, there is no such thing as adultery.
As Lotte’s health was deteriorating and Greta was diagnosed having colon cancer and have to undergo treatment, it is when the whole depression of death sinking into readers’ minds. Greta’s falling in love with another woman and Elizabeth’s affair added drama to the whole novel and I especially like the question raised: where does privacy end and secrecy begins?
I enjoyed the novel. Not a page turner I must say and I suspect even if I have read Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” – Elizabeth was supposed to write a modern script based on that – I would not have gained much out from it.
Towards the end of the novel, it was mentioned that passion is pointless. Or is it?