Who is it we love and why do we love these people? Toward the end of her life, Judith asks these questions, trying to understand why she chose Elliot Pine to love. Why, for sixty years, did she persist in loving someone who never gave as much as he was given? In her quest for understanding, she writes her story to this exceptional man. Meeting as children in Chicago, they move to opposite coasts. … coasts. Elliot embarks on a remarkable legal career in Washington and New York while Judith raises her children alone in California, after tragedy. Coming together again and again throughout their lives, their love is never equal, Elliot defining the terms of the relationship.
Judith examines the role of Beauty in love, for Elliot’s face and form were beautiful. She considers the role of Consolation, how they supported one another in devastating times. Insanity, Magic, Deceit, Sensory Fulfillment, and, finally, Being Seen—Judith looks at these many aspects of her love.
Her feelings for this man cost her, impinged on every other relationship in her life: friends, her two husbands, even her three children. After sixty years, however, it all changes. Judith makes one more profound sacrifice, finally achieving a sort of long-awaited happiness in her love.
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Reading like a memoir, this novel is a long love letter to Elliot, the man Judith has loved for 60 years. She questions why we love who we do and looks at the loss and sacrifice she has endured in this unequal love. Anyone who has loved someone devotedly throughout their life will find themselves in these pages. A beautiful and gently unfolding story.
I found the book boring. I know I’m not in the majority because it had good reviews. But a 71 year old lady telling her life story to Eliot was not written in a style that I found interesting.
Thought provoking. Relationship are one of life’s mysteries.
A great read!! I was surprised that I liked it so much. Loved the protagonist, and couldn’t wait to get back to it. Read it in two days!
I’m giving this book five stars although I found parts frustrating. The stars are for the unique subject matter and the author’s handling of it. Too many authors seem to be following a template. This author created her own road .
This book could have used a good editor, but the story is strong.
Kept my interest all the way through
This is a beautiful story about a life-long passion. Loved the characters even though they were far from perfect.
A beautifully written tale of enduring love by a master storyteller.
Elayne Klasson had me at her first sentence, in her opening chapter, “Beauty”:
“Over seventy, I am considered by most of the world and most of history, an old woman.”
Klassom speaks to so many of us of a certain age as we take the measure of our lives and of our loves. For the book’s protagonist, Judith, it was one love, her fierce, lifelong attachment to her childhood friend, Elliot. He did not love her the way she needed to be loved, but she held on anyway.
This deep, complicated, sometimes confounding, but immensely satisfying story spans 60 years. While you may not always agree with the choices Judith makes as she holds Elliot in her heart, if not in her arms (but once in awhile, that happens, too), you will be riveted until the very end. Klasson is a wonderful storyteller and Judith is a completely relatable protagonist. I loved this book.
Beautifully-rendered and full of insight, this poignant story is a must-read.
Elayne Kasson’s Love is a Rebellious Bird, is an exploration of the depth, the passion and the unreliability of a fierce young love aged over time in the life of a bright and complicated woman. With elegant prose, Klasson fully explores the inner narrative of Judith, a psychologically sophisticated woman who gives us her understanding of her relationship with a man she has loved for sixty years. That her love was deep, passionate, in many ways unrequited, and almost obsessional plays out in the context of her marriages to other men, her life as a single mother, his marriages and relationships with other women, and both their successful professions. This is a particularly poignant story for readers of Judith’s generation, as it deftly describes the changes in societal constructs of romantic relationships that both influenced but ultimately were cast aside by Judith’s own needs and wants. Why we love the people we love, and how we decide to move forward with them in and out of our lives is a common literary theme. What is uncommon, is to find these considerations so skillfully written about in a tightly crafted story. Brava!
This is a gorgeous book. I love stories of lifelong love and longing for a particular person starting in childhood, and this book does a beautiful job of exploring that terrain — specifically, how the power dynamic between two people can shift over time. Satisfying in the way of Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, Love is a Rebellious Bird is a book worth reading, and a veritable page turner. Kudos to Elayne Klasson for this beautiful work.
Love is a Rebellious Bird is, in essence, a sad but touching love letter from Judith to her one true love, Elliot. As their relationship spans over sixty years, Judith documents her feelings and the love, mostly unrequited, that she has for her friend. Sad though it is that Elliot never feels as deeply as she does, Love is a Rebellious Bird is still a heartwarming, beautiful story.
Over her long life, Judith hangs on to the one friend who has been a constant in her life. Through husbands, death, divorce, and children she has always known that he would be there. In reality though, he was there when it was convenient for him, not her. But still, she always held out hope that someday he would love her and need her as much as she loved and needed him. I have to admit, there where times that I just wanted to shake her and make her see his true worth and to tell her she deserved so much more.
Love is a Rebellious Bird is an excellent character-driven novel, which focuses on the mindset of one woman as she maneuvers through her life—as she struggles to finds her happiness and her purpose.