Kelly's Turn

I really enjoyed this book. It inspired a case of CPD syndrome and I flew through it. I liked that the flow of the book didn’t depend on the timeline. I also agree with Keri that I wish there had been pictures to accompany the stories – C’est la vie!

My favorite character in the book was definitely Madame Mallet. I think if I’d been in the Ramsey’s situation I would have had more patience with her from the start. I’m not as bothered by her behavior as they seemed to be. Not sure if you noticed, Keri, but Rebecca dedicated her book to Madame Mallet!

In the chapter “Monsieur Rouge, the Piano Man” I loved that the Ramsey’s decided to keep their piano as it was, even with it’s flaws. The descriptions of the piano were fabulous: “New freshly tuned pianos sounded too soft – too shy, too wishy-washy. I loved the way my piano echoed in my ears without even pressing the pedals, like a saloon piano from an old Western.” “I need a piano that’s at home in my house, wherever we live. And if it has great legs, curvy shoulders, and a voice that means business, what more could we want?” While these thoughts are wonderful in concept, as a musician, I’d hate to have a piano that couldn’t be tuned!

In the chapter “Blessed Mary” I enjoyed the description of Rebecca’s infatuation with Mary. But my favorite part was: “The Lord’s Prayer wasn’t part of every service back home at First Baptist, but now in our Episcopal service we said it every week, first in English and then in French. The French version was glued in the front of the prayer books, and I had it almost memorized. Huddling in our little stone chapel with all the other Americans and Brits and South Africans and saying the prayer together as best we could was one of my favorite parts of our service. Even with my bad accent it sounded beautiful. Saying it in French forced me to think about each word and reminded me that God was not American.”

In the chapter “Grandmere Bonnabry” I loved the bed and breakfast the Ramsey’s visited. While I’m not much of a B&B person myself, Madame Bonnabry seemed charming. I, again, had a hard time sympathizing with Rebecca when she got irritated with her hostess. The comments that were critical about the children weren’t incorrect or overly harsh. They did need some more discipline! It’s a pet peeve of mine when people say you just have to expect kids to behave badly when they’re young – kids live up to whatever expectation of them you have. If you expect them to behave, they will. Our generation has just become really lax with discipline. *climbing off the soap box*

I’d love to stay somewhere out of the USA for an extended period of time and see how I adapted and learned to fit in. Not necessarily France, but somewhere. This book made the idea attractive and was entertaining to boot.