Ithaca by Susan Fish

from goodreads

4 stars

There are times, during nap time mostly, when I stop and think, what next? By that I mean. When my kids are all old enough to be in school during the day, or when they are grown up and have left the house, what next? What does that next chapter in my life look like. Do I want a career outside the one in my home? Do I want to harness the ultimate power in my domestic engineering life? What next?

I haven't come up with any definitive answers. All I know is that whatever "what next" is I want to be an amazing person, and an amazing and supportive wife and mother. If I can check those boxes, I think "what next" is going to be okay.

Synopsis

Daisy Jane finds herself in a bit of a transitional place. Her husband of nearly forty years has died suddenly and her only child lives half way around the world in Singapore. She is now trying to navigate in a world where she has never been alone. When she sees a sign about fracking and decides to take a night course to learn more about it her eyes are opened to what she herself can contribute, even if it is just soup on Wednesdays.

My Thoughts

I picked this book up mainly because it was written by a local author. It is kind of neat to know that in this small city we have authors. Usually, I think of authors being aloof or in a metropolis or in a secluded farm house. Really, they come in all sort of shapes and locales.

I was very pleasantly, not really surprised, but content, satisfied, I don't know the word but what ever it was I was that, pleasantly.

The location of Ithaca was superb. I have never been there but next time I am in that general area I think I will go. It sounds beautiful. I forgot that Cornell University is there and the Moosewood Cafe. I definitely need to check it out.

The character of Daisy Jane was super interesting. I think it is because she is going through what I feel I might go through at some point. She was a homemaker now thrust into making lots of decisions. She no longer had her family to focus her energy on. She had to take stock of herself and decide what she wanted to do for herself. That kind of personal inventory is not the easiest to do.

I love the idea of a community soup night where you open your home to whomever. And the soups sounded delish! I know that in downtown Kitchener there is a family that has a potluck every week. What a great way to build community.

The comparison between losing a spouse due to dying and then losing a spouse due to a chronic disease was interesting. Disease does change people. In the terms of the one characters wife, she had MS. She was unable to do the things she used to do. Her personality changed, the dynamic of their relationship changed. Is that harder or just different than if the spouse had just died. While grieving is still part of the process, is any of it easy? It gave some interesting food for thought.

Then there was the story line about the fracking and environmental aspects of it. Fish did a great job with this, describing the issue without it feeling like we were in a lecture hall. She wasn't preachy and really left it up to ourselves what we thought about it.

For a book that really wasn't that long there were many seeds of ideas that were planted. It was an enjoyable read and I highly recommend it.