<p>I did finish the book - barely. I don’t have time for much of a post at the moment, other than to say I knew nothing of Swedish history but, like mathmom, am a fair fan of the French Revolution. I think the author does a good job with her mix of fiction and history here. She seems to weave her story through and around the truths of time and place. I look forward to reading through the links Mary provided and learning more about King Gustav III.</p>
<p>Mary: Like you, I appreciated how different the book is from past CC Book Club selections - and even from my usual personal selections.</p>
<p>I confess I knew little about the history. I do know a little about the opera, but only because my D used Saper Vorreste as one of her audition pieces for summer programs and sang it in a couple of recitals. </p>
<p>I think the Octavo illustrates the role of free will over destiny in that you are free to define who is in your Octavo. You may believe it is pre-ordained but, in reality, many people could fill each role. One thing that Emil was very slow to discover and may have never discovered is that the love and connection of friendship is as important or even more important than romantic love.</p>
<p>I just saw a theatre production of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage, a play which takes place during the 30 Years War. Excellent play, but a very disturbing representation of the effects of the war.</p>
<p>I’ve seen Mother Courage, but it was a Peter Sellars production in modern dress with people up in the catwalks overhead - I’m not sure I was ever aware that it was supposed to be set during the Thirty Year’s War!</p>
<p>I listened to the audio version and I think that really helped things move along for me. I liked the narrator’s voice and he did a great job with the different characters. I really enjoyed the description of the “town,” particularly the sled scenes. I also a very real picture in my head of what the homes looked like. I was a little disappointed that the Plum did not seem to get her just desserts.</p>
<p>True, and I’ll bet she’ll find a reason to get rid of Lars too - in the sequel. I agree that Christian’s fate seemed a bit too dark, but so did the sacrifice of the innocents by Joanna. She seemingly retained her purity in the face of them.</p>
<p>I agree. I think that in general, Emil was slow to understand what love is about – any kind of love. He spent a ridiculously long time lusting after the silly Carlotta, and he was rather self-centered – not unkind by any means, just caught up in his own desires and how everyone else fits into his personal destiny. I suppose that’s a pretty fundamental human weakness.</p>
<p>By the end, though, he has changed, at least a little. Early in the book, when Mrs. Sparrow tells Emil that he is a friend she can trust, he is “painfully aware of the fact that this was the first time in many years that anyone had called me friend without liquor or a loan” (p. 24). By the end, he writes, “I visited the Nord</p>
<p>Just dropping in to say I won’t be dropping in on this discussion, as I am and have been utterly overwhelmed with the summer/D leaving/S study abroad/fall coursework. I hope to get back on the wagon for October - at least we’ll be empty nesters by then!</p>
<p>I am getting into it now, and things are starting to happen. I am thinking about the premise, the <em>eight</em>, and wondering who those people are going to be. I decided I like the set up of the <em>eight</em> and am starting to wonder if I have various people playing similar roles in my own life.</p>
<p>I think the idea of the Octavo hints of the mystical, but Mrs. Sparrow’s breakdown pulls the reader back enough to question. The reader leaves not quite sure of the part cartomancy plays in events. You can’t quite discount it but neither can you credit it. Certainly the search for his Octavo makes Emil move from a self-centered focus on himself to an awareness of those around him and the roles they play in his life.</p>
<p>I read a hard copy of the book and found myself flipping to the timeline in the front of the book repeatedly to look at the relevant history of France and Sweden. I also referred to the end pages where you can see the Stockholm Octavo as it spreads from Emil to Mrs. Sparrow to Johanna and so on, throughout Stockholm as it were. I thought that neat. Can you flip to front (timeline) and back (Stockholm Octavo) of the book like that with a Kindle?</p>
<p>I did not see Mrs. Sparrow as possessing any mystical powers. Her thinking was simply beyond her time and she was very insightful. She recognized the power of friendship and the power of women in a time when many understood neither. With Emil, she was more a therapist using the Octavo to force him to stop isolating and appreciate those around him. Of course, she also was looking to move forward her own agenda.</p>
<p>I really didn’t follow the cards and the roles all too astutely, but I do feel Emil’s journey brought him personal growth…he became less self-serving and better able to appreciate friendship. I did not like him at all in the beginning, but the plot was intriguing (with interesting characters) and I was curious to see how it would come together. And it did (at least for me).</p>
<p>Yes, I questioned. I think Mrs. Sparrow believes fully in the power of the cards and in her own psychic gifts. She isn’t a fraud out to con people. Emil desperately wants to believe in her powers as well, and sometimes he seems to be grasping at straws. At one point, he wonders about the connection between his Octavo and the coincidence of meeting so many women with blue eyes – whereas the cynic in me was pretty sure that the odds of his running into so many blue-eyed women in Stockholm had more to do with their Scandinavian heritage than anything else!</p>
<p>That said, Emil does experience a certain type of “magic” that leads to the personal growth that psychmom described. However, I think it’s the sort available to anyone who makes a genuine, loving connection with another person. Mrs. Sparrow is the first to put this natural magic into motion by befriending Emil and urging him to look beyond the narrow world he had made for himself. In the beginning, Emil says of the people in the Town, “They…did not know me, for I made certain that they did not. It was in my interest professionally and personally to be utterly forgettable—escaping entanglements, obligations, and occasionally revenge” (p. 11). By the end of the book, he is far from “utterly forgettable” and has committed himself to all three: entanglements, obligations and revenge.</p>
<p>Yes, I can’t think of another book where a character changes so much and so convincingly. I quite liked him by the end. I was never quite so sure about Johanna, she seemed a bit of a cipher, but I’m glad she got away.</p>
<p>I agree that killing off Christian was just mean and really seemed out of character for the book.</p>
I was never quite so sure about Johanna, she seemed a bit of a cipher, but I’m glad she got away.</p>