Firefly Lane - Kristin Hannah
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah after seeing a number of recommendations for this book, and 'The Nightingale', also written by her, on the SRR group and on Goodreads. It is the kind of book that I love – it takes us on a journey with two girls, who strike an unlikely friendship in their childhood, and stay best friends through the decades and various stages of their lives, and through all the ups and downs of the life and friendship. One thing I would say about it is – it’s very well written and I couldn’t put it down, due to or despite the feeling it evoked in me.
It started wonderfully well, when Tully and Kate meet each other at the tender and turbulent age of 14 – as different in their personalities and family background, as they could be. The only thing that they have in common is their feeling of isolation. It portrays the desperation of the two girls in a beautiful manner, that is almost heart-breaking. I also loved the way it captures their relationship with their respective mothers, and the impact it has on their outlook and life, more so in case of Tully.
However, as the book progressed, I kept getting more and more annoyed by the story, as well as the narration. In the beginning, the details of Tully's appearance were relevant, as they highlighted the difference between her and Kate. But when she is becoming or, has become, a smashing success, and the author insists on giving us details of her designer dresses and fancy cars every single time she makes an appearance, it gets irritating and irrelevant. Over the time, the author has both the lead characters settled into stereotypes - Tully is a star, an achiever, while Kate is overwhelmed by her domestic duties (which, incidentally, she brings upon herself by volunteering for every single event that happens at kids’ school and her social circle). By the 3/4th mark, they became so one-dimensional that I couldn’t like either of them much any longer. At this point I was almost on the verge of abandoning it - the book is too big (almost 480 pages) – for the story. It would have been better to avoid the pointless, repeated descriptions of Tully’s dresses and parties and even success stories, and make the book leaner without losing on the story.
But my biggest peeve is the way it undermines women, and in the very clichéd manner. Through her characters, the author keeps stating that in this age, women can have everything they want, be whoever they want to be. But, with her story, she just goes on to emphasize the opposite - women can't really have everything. Tully, the ambitious one, sacrificed love for her career, and in the middle age, starts feeling lonely and regrets her choices. Kate, whose ideal was domestic bliss, is tired and depressed, and regrets not having an identity of her own. Both suffer a feeling of loss, and of course, each is somewhat jealous of the other (though that doesn’t affect their love for each other).
Towards the end, it redeemed itself, by showing Kate’s troubled relationship with her teenage daughter, and demonstrating the way life comes a full circle. This part of the story, was rather predictable, but it was so heart-wrenching that I couldn’t dislike it. I cried through the last few chapters (glad I was alone at home at the time :D), and it left me exhausted.
All through the book, I couldn’t help comparing it to Beaches (by Iris Rainer Dart), and not just because of the theme of an enduring friendship between two girls. After finishing this, I strongly feel that the story line bears a lot of similarity, and I may go so far as to call it a more sophisticated or sanitized version of Beaches
