A Northern Light, Week 1-Post B

After reading my book, A Northern Light, by Jennifer Donnelly for the first time, I think it is good. As I can tell so far, the book switches from present to past, every couple chapters. The book abruptly started at a hotel where Mattie and her friends are working, and they just found a dead body in the lake. I was confused at what was happening at all, until it switched to the past and I got some background. Mattie seems very smart, but is always writing sad poems and stories, rather that happy, which I think is probably because she is still grieving over the loss of her mother. After her mother died, it seems that Mattie has taken the mother role of the family, and feels responsible for everyone. Thought Mattie has this burden, I think this gives her a better reason to go to college and gives her more determination. I think Mattie deserves it.

When Mattie is at the hotel wondering what possibly could have happened to the couple who died, she makes up a story and at the end says,

“I decide that I like it. It’s a new kind of story for me-the kind that stitches things up nicely and leaves no end dangling and makes me feel placid instead of all stirred up. The kind that has a happy ending-or at least as happy an ending as possible with the heroine dead and the hero presumed so. The kind of story I once told Miss Wilcox was a lie. The kind I said I would never ever write.” (pg. 47).

I think this tells us that eventually something that happens to Mattie before or during her stay at the hotel, that helps her get over her grief, or helps her realize there is more to life than sadness. Maybe, right then after making up that story, Mattie realizes she shouldn’t find reasons to make her sad when she could be happy.