The Power of One, continued

"Peekay, God is too busy making the sun come up and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with such rubbish. Only man wants always God should be there to condemn this one and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening up all the new flowers for business. [...] In Mexico there is a cactus that even sometimes you would think God forgets. But no, my friend, this is not so. On a full moon in the desert every one hundred years he remembers and he opens up a single flower to bloom. And if you should be there and you see this beautiful cactus blossom painted silver by the moon and laughing up at the stars, this, Peekay, is heaven. [...] This is the faith in God the cactus has. [...] It is better just to get on with the business of living and minding your own business and maybe, if God likes the way you do things, he may just let you flower for a day or a night. But don't go pestering and begging and telling him all your stupid litlte sins, that way you will spoil his day. Absoloodle."

A quote from Doc, the grandfatherly, cactus-obsessed, wonderfully puttering German music professor from Bryce Courtenay's novel The Power of One. The book is worth reading for Doc's goofy, beautiful bits of wisdom alone.

Tonight, I was finally able to turn the last few pages of The Power of One. I enjoyed the book, and found myself very attached to Peekay (and a few of his gang of friends). However, I have to admit that I was glad when it ended. Each book (the novel itself is split into three) was a little bit slower and a little bit more difficult to read than the last, and by the time I started the third one, I wanted to be finished.

In the second half of the book, Courtenay resolved almost all of the issues that I mentioned in my last entry. We see the cocky, inexperienced, sometimes bullheaded side of Peekay that I was aching to see peek through. Although he was still a "saint" overall (in the eyes of the People, quite literally),  making him a little bit overconfident and giving him the attitude to go against the authorities in his life was a very welcome change. These actions made him a more realistic character, and, in my case, brought me deeper into the story. I finally saw Peekay as a 3-D, fully rounded character, and I was really rooting for him. I have to say that the end caught me off guard (I'll try not to give it away) - it seemed abrupt and out of character for the Peekay that we had grown to know. I was hoping for an epilogue following this final scene, something to clue us in to the next few steps in Peekay's life. We traveled with this boy from an infant to a boy somewhere between 17 and 19, investing faith and hope and emotion into him...I was disappointed to not know more about his life after leaving the mines. Did he continue on to Oxford? We are told, in a roundabout way, that his relationship with Morrie continues, which makes me assume so. But does he continue on to become the welterweight champion of the world, making the endless training and practice worth it?

As much as I wish I knew, I also understand why Courtenay chose to end it where he did. The imagination of the readers will build a million different incredible and wonderful lives for Peekay. And what more could a novelist want, really, than for his character to live and thrive in the minds of his readers?

And so the quest to find a new story begins. I was planning on picking up where I left off with Loving Frank, which has been sitting on my bookshelf (I have a tendency to get so excited about a new book that I'll forget about the one I was reading...), but the other day I ran across a quote that really sparked my interest.

"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two."

After a bit of investigative Google-ing, I learned that the quote is from a novel called Captain Correlli's Mandolin (it was also made into a movie).  I know nothing about the book, and purposefully refrained from researching it further - I like the idea of being completely surprised. I have to admit, though, that I have very high expectations. I connected to that quote very deeply (to the point that my boyfriend and I have tossed around the idea of including it in our wedding vows), so if the novel itself is disappointing, it will be a real let down. But hopefully, the novel will prove just as inspiring and beautiful as that specific passage. I am very excited to trade The Power of One for Captain Correlli's Mandolin at the library tomorrow, and plan on spending the afternoon reading outside. There's nothing better than a good book out in the sunshine!