"This is the story of a young woman's struggle for independence. It doesn't end in a satisfying way but there is so much about youth and love and power here that the book should be re-read many times." This is, without a doubt, the most depressing book I have ever read in my entire life. The moral of this story is: life stinks and then you die.
First of all, bad families upset me. And Maggie's family is bad. They treat her horribly and it broke my heart from the first page of the book.
This is one of those books that it's hard to say anything about without giving away the whole thing so it looks like this is gonna be a pretty short review. The book is not badly written, I found in it elements reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet, Jane Austen, and Jane Eyre, but it is so thouroughly depressing and disatisfying that it's hardly worth reading. It does have a lot of insight into youth and young "love" so that I can understand why it is on this list but I found it so upsetting that I would never want to recommend it to anyone because I would not want to encourage them toward depression.
Some good quotes:
"It was the first sign within the poor child of that new sense which is the gift of sorrow.""Maggie, with all her keen susceptibility, yet felt as if the sorrow made larger room for her love to flow in."
"'I will not begin any future, even for you,' said Maggie, tremulously, 'with a deliberate consent to what ought not to have been. What I told you at Basset I feel now: I would rather have died than fall into this temptation.'"
"Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides doing what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves. They mean renouncing whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in us - whatever would cause misery to those whom the course of our lives has made dependent on us."
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