My Never Ending List

I loved the feeling that this book provoked in me and in the characters. The characters believed that they knew their death dates, yet in the back of their minds there was a part of them that hoped that the fortune teller was wrong. I enjoyed following the lives of these young characters as they matured. They each had desires and needs as they were growing up yet, the words of the woman on Hester Street haunted their minds, their death date clearly marked on their internal calendars, just waiting for them.

 

This was the last summer they would all be together. Daniel believed that visiting the woman that everyone was talking about would be a perfect outing for his siblings and himself. The siblings had finally obtained her address, they had gathered together an offering for her, and now they were ready. Arriving at her door on Hester Street, they knock.

 

Individually, they each go visit this woman and she tells each of them the information they seek before leaving her apartment. As the siblings leave her apartment complex, the mood had shifted since they had first arrived. The excitement that once hung in the air, has vanished.

 

The siblings don’t mention what occurred behind the doors on Hester Street and time moves on. Father dies and the children get emotional over his death. The novel now turns to the lives of the children. Klara and Simon decide to leave for California and their stories take center stage. I absolutely loved Simon. I loved his spunk for life and his sense of adventure. I was taken in by the way he embraced the words he received from the fortune teller. I wept for Simon many times, as he gave his life everything that he had! Klara loves her magic yet I felt that she lacked confidence. She needed Simon and the other individuals that she meets in her life to really find herself. I enjoyed her story, I found it interesting and fascinating and I appreciated the author giving us the all the details about her life. As we meet Daniel, we also learn more about the woman on Hester Street. What a great way to pull the story together. Daniel becomes emotional about his original involvement with the fortune teller. Daniel becomes an emotional individual in the story, more emotional then I original thought he would. Varya is the last sibling whose story we get to hear. She seems more together then the rest of the characters but the more I read her story, I had to wonder if perhaps she is that way because her death date is further out than the rest of her siblings. Just a thought but perhaps she has had more life experiences.

 

I really enjoyed this dramatic story and I found each of their stories enjoyable and captivating. I thought it was interesting how the siblings handled the information that they obtained from the fortune teller and how it shaped their lives. I found it interesting also how this information was shared with their spouses, friends, etc. (I thought it was very unusual that the siblings handled this all the same way).