Grace - A powerful story about discovering your purpose and finding true happiness.

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Empty houses and overcrowded graveyards become the landscape of her journey. Beggars and thieves her countrymen.

If you’re into seriously fanatical religion, then I’d stay away from this book, especially if your breed of fanaticism dances in Christianity’s court. I think the only reason I was able to stomach all the religious fodder in this story was because it totally demonised it. Having said that, I think its safe to admit that I totally loved this book! Grace is an awesome character whose initiative, dedication, and inquisitive mind set her up as a noble heroine worthy of admiration by all. For someone who has spent her entire life in a brainwashed bubble of Christian poo, Grace accepts the truth about her circumstances with the maturity of someone much older than her years. If it were me, I’d be in all kinds of denial. But she was believable in every single way; I never once found myself thinking that her choices or her thoughts were unrealistic. Lynch’s Grace is a compelling story and beautifully written. The characters that Grace meets on the road are so well described in their misfortune. The setting is grim and haunting. The obliviousness of the weathly to the poor’s plight is heartbreaking, but one history has shown us time and time again. Nobody in the antebellum South said "been there, done that..." This appears to have bubbled up in the 1970s. Anastasia Allen has worked her entire life for a shot at Team USA. It looks like everything is going according to plan when she gets a full scholarship to the University of California, Maple Hills and lands a place on their competitive figure skating team.This is a marvellous book, lovingly edited, beautifully produced – the paper is notably good, a rare thing these days – and brimming with literary insights, much laughter, a sprinkle of gossip and the poet’s insuppressible joie de vivre, even in adversity. Buy it, read it, and keep it to hand on to your children. This at times reads like an epic tale (fairy tale perhaps) of a girl who disguises herself as a boy, always just escapes starvation by a hair, survives violence, and just keeps on. She manages to walk from Donegal in the northwest of the country, to Tipperary. But this is not a story of magical realism at all. It is instead a stunning description of the landscape of the famine and an adolescent girl, who again and again escapes death. This novel is never relentless, and it avoids being bleak. Lynch is able to do this by not repeating endless descriptions of the devastation. Instead, he focuses on single characteristics of a scene, such as the description of entering a village where Grace notes the pervasive silence. In another, the eerie scene of a dead family standing in a shop doorway as if they're waiting for it to open. The small group of starving locals who show up for the obligatory preaching by a Protestant evangelical, and the 3 young children in the group appearing to have no clothing except mud. Il fatto è che lo stile sicuramente partecipa a rendere animalesca e pulsante quella natura infida che accerchia i protagonisti della storia, ma che alla lunga diventa ridondante e forzato. Thus we get the stories of three generations of slave women, of murder and mayhem, of desperate escapes towards freedom. I guess I have read enough slave narratives now to have become somewhat inured to the abuse and violence that come with the institution. The key to this novel is the unending strength of a mother's love for her children. Without sentimentality, Natashia Deon plums all the conflicting emotions and deeds done under the almost mystical connection a mother has with her offspring.

Grace is an emotionally gripping novel. Set in the antebellum South through the Civil War and the early days of emancipation, it touches on the woman as captive. Not just in the literal sense but in the figurative sense as well. Though the novel focuses on the narrator Naomi and her daughter, Cynthia, the Jewish madam and Annie, the abandoned wife of a plantation owner also have their own crosses to bear.

A synopsis for the book said: “When a young farmer confronts intruders in the middle of the night he has no idea that just minutes later he will be left dying in a pool of blood. What’s more chilling is what the perpetrators were willing to kill for. WOW WOW WOW.....as in ***WOW*!!!.... The characters - storytelling - plot - history are all amazing in equal amounts. Justice is getting what you deserve. And mercy is not getting the bad you deserve. Grace is getting a good thing, even when you don’t deserve it.” While I was not aware of this until after I read this, “Grace” is the sequel to Paul Lynch’s ”Red Sky in Morning.” It is a lovely read as a stand-alone novel, although I do now plan to read ”Red Sky in Morning” because this was wonderful.

But when Anastasia’s skating partner faces an uncertain future, she may have to look to Nate to take her shot. Grace is a superb character, she's headstrong and remarkable. At just eleven she knows when her grandfather is lying and she also knows how to express her discontent for extreme church rules whilst ensuring she doesn't go too far and jeopardize her own family. I hope she can show the next generation of young people that you can still have faith even if you question it. The comparison between her and her friend Delilah, also a member of the church, is really important too. It shows how Grace might have been if her father hadn't taught her the importance of asking questions. The phrase on the book cover sums it up perfectly, 'If you don't ask, you'll never know...'

The main character, however, was a runaway slave woman named Naomi and the story is told by alternating chapters of her voice and those of the other characters. Morris wrote a number of feature film and telemovie screenplays, including The Other Facts of Life and Second Childhood, both produced by The Australian Children's Television Foundation. The Other Facts of Life won an AWGIE Award for the Best Original Children's Film Script. Grace’s younger brother, Colly, sneaks out to go with her as she leaves Donegal and starts wandering south. The rest of the novel is the five-year odyssey Grace undergoes before returning. I won’t spoil any of the plot details beyond that much, in case you choose to read this one yourself. This life is light." In this, Lynch succinctly captures beauty in prose. This life is light, if only we know how to look. Grace, and many of the people she encounters, are corrupted by their suffering and the collapse of civilized behavior. And she is ultimately saved by grace (giving the book's title a clever double meaning). The salvation that she receives comes at the hands of very imperfect human beings, but it is grace nevertheless. So the book goes deeper than just Grace's heartbreaking experiences. It is, more deeply, the story of everyone's life. As a Christian I am supposed to believe that our salvation is in Jesus and I do believe that is true - ultimately. But, day by day, we are corrupted by the hardships of our lives. And day by day, we are saved by the bumbling kindness of other imperfect beings like ourselves. We suffer, and yet we continue, by the grace of each other. This is one of the themes of my own novel.

Discover the darkness that lurks around every corner in the latest instalment of the award-winning Grace series, now a major ITV series. A ruthless crime. A race against time. In the dead of night, a farmer hears a suspicious noise. It's everyone's worst nightmare: a break-in. When he confronts the intruders, he has no idea that just minutes later he will be left lying in a pool of blood. By the way, Delilah, Grace's so-called best friend, was SO annoying. I hated her for not having faith in Grace. and not looking out for her. The amount of support she gave to Grace in her time of need [= none] was horrible of her. Just thought I'd say that.) A poetic tribute with many rich layers of meaning, Grace is narrated by the spirit of Naomi. Using this literary device, the novel is told in flashes over the course of both Naomi’s life and memorable, if sometimes, horrific moments of Josey’s. Even among the starving men, hungry for more than just food, there is rescue. Saved from the dangerous intentions and violence of men by the ‘good hand of John Bart’ she travels all over Ireland with him as company. She should be thankful but thinks him ‘Mr. Conceited Breeches” with “eyes that permit no watcher to see into them but see through you instead.” Always walking on foot, weary, hungry “she imagines her feet like bruised fruit”. Hunger, death, criminal elements… Lynch shows us a dangerous world through Grace. That there is still hope and spiritual musings in the midst of starvation and so much death gives this novel heart. The writing is beautiful, and the language makes you feel transported into the past. For anyone that enjoys historical fiction, you will sink into Grace’s weary shoes.At the level of argument, there is also a puzzling logic at play. While making a case for “moral beauty”, Baird’s first impulse is to reach for “proof” of its validity and value by citing scientific studies. This hunger for certainty, this impulse to nail a state that by its nature cannot be nailed leads her, on occasions, into the realm of pseudo-science. Nel tentativo di restituire stilisticamente le tinte lugubri del racconto, Lynch ricorre spesso a effetti di suono e figure retoriche espressive, in particolar modo nella messa a fuoco della natura, nella resa della luce e del clima di terre che dipinge come primordiali: “L’incudine di una nube appuntita rotolò rumoreggiando da ovest”. It has taken me quite a few weeks to finish Grace and I’ll admit I did struggle with it at times, finding myself skimming the last few chapters. There always seemed to be another book that was more demanding of my attention or more in tune with my reading mood. However, I have now finished it and the book is certainly notable for its lyrical, poetic language, imaginative metaphors and at times impressionistic style (most clearly illustrated in the chapter entitled ‘Crow’ which approaches stream of consciousness). Where do we start when we tell the stories of our loved ones? … I guess I could start with who begot who like the Bible do, but where somebody comes from only matters to people who come from something and as it was, she came from me.” In his novel Grace, Paul Lynch recreates Ireland during the famine. The writing is gorgeous, the protagonist, Grace, memorable, the descriptions of what she experiences while on the road crushing.