Mary Mehan Awake

This is a perfect little jewel of a book. The story is simple but powerfully, gracefully told. It's rare to find historical fiction that rings true not only in the details but in the emotions and actions of the characters. And the writing is remarkable--it's categorized as a young adult book but even as an adult I found the lyrical descriptions moving and beautiful, and the characters delightful. I wish the author had written a third installment to Mary's story. Highly recommended.

This book was great. It was short, yet sweet, and eloquent. It is hard how to describe how well the author used the english language in this book. It is an awaking, as the title suggests. It is romantic and charming, yet self-empowering. There is little more to say other than try to prove to you how touching the book is and, especially if you like historical fiction, how nessesary it is to read it.

_Mary Mehan Awake_ is the poignant sequel to _The Dreams of Mairhe Mehan_. Mairhe, who was a nurse during the Civil War, now goes by her American name, Mary, and she has left Washington DC work for a bird photographer in New York. Mary is beginning to emerge from the numbness that was a defense against the horrors of the war. The romance between Mary and Henry, a musician deafened by his stint in the war, is sweet and well done.

The book Mary Mehan Awake is a great book, it is about an Irish woman who has come to America and was a nurse during the cival war. As the book starts it is a series of letters which was a creative way for Armstronge to let the reader in on what happened in the first book, and what Mary has been going through. After the war Mary is recommended by Walt Whitman to be a servant to his friend Jasper Dorsett. She leaves Washington D.C. and heads for the shores of lake Ontario. Mary is a good worker, and Jasper Dorsett is a wildlife photographer, and Mary finds a deep intrest in the photography. After the war Mary had been stripped of all emotions, she had seen too much pain and sorrow and could not feel anymore. At Dorsettes home she begins to fall in love with the stable hand who has been left deaf after the war. As she describes the sounds she hears to him she finds the beauty in life and she beigins to awaken from the sadness she has been so used to. Awake seemed like such an odd title as I started reading the book, but it is the perfect title. It take love and friendship for Mary to come out of the shell she has been in for so long and see the joy and beauty around her. The style that Armstronge uses is great, she uses long flowing sentences that really draw the reader in. The sentences are long but very smooth, the writing is calming and relaxing because it so so subdued. The writing is also very metaphorical, the title of each chapter is a metaphore about the chapter, and the metaphore evolves as the chapter goes along. The author does a great job of making the reader have a relationship with the characters, you get to the point where you begin to care about what happens, and you want them to fall in love. I really enjoyed the book and the style of writing was great as I talked about, but It kind of lost my intrest. The story was a great idea, and a solid theme, it was just something that I can't relate to. I think that a girl could appriciate this book a lot more than I did, because they could probably relate to the feelings that Mary is having throughout the book. I would recommend the book to anyone male or female but I think a female could get a lot more out of it. The strongest part of the book for me was the imagery through the story. As Mary rides into town with the stable hand it describes the leaves falling around and the colors of the trees. When she first arrives at the dorsette house it talks about the cool air pushing against her chest and making her numb. You could really get a sence of what Mary was seeing and feeling. The letters at the begining was an interesting part of the book, I have never seen this sort of introduction to a book, and it is great, you can't even tell that this is a sequal, it really gave the reader a sence of what was going on in Mary's life up to the point where the book begins.

In her haunting, poignant novel, The Dreams of Mairhe Mehan, author Jennifer Armstrong captured the horror of the Civil War through the story of Mairhe, a young Irish immigrant women living in a Washington, D.C., slum. Now the war is over, and Mairhe has taken the Americanized spelling of her name, Mary. But after two years in the wards, and having lost all sense of everything, Mary must somehow heal. But she knows she can never forget the war- not after seeing hundreds of men die daily. Mary takes a position as a domestic in a tranquil village in upstate New York, and there, Mary begins to heal, and even fall in love. This is a wonderful novel you will never forget.