Customer Reviews

Silver Pages on the Lawn

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This is the sequel to Nora Lourie Percival's first memoir, Weather of the Heart, which I loved!! This book covers the love story between MS Percival and her first husband, poet Herman Gund. I find Percival's history to be fascinating and am ever amazed with her ability to rise above all the travails life puts before her. This is a type of Romeo and Juliet love story carried out through a series of letters the lovers sent to each other during times of extended separation. Most compelling of all to me are the poems written by Gund which serve as section breakes between parts of the book. The ending is a surprise and a heartache which will linger long after the pages of the book are closed.

This is the sequal to "Weather of the Heart" a book I think is fantastic. Since I so loved the first book, I was disappointed in this one. "Silver Pages...." is well written and flawless in construction but the story moves slowly.
It is interesting to read about student life in the 1930s and how students have, in some ways, not changed much. It is sad to read the long evolution of Herman's depression while the ever optomistic Nora carries him emotionally through his short life - not unlike how she carried her mother emotionally in the first book.
I found the font selected for the printing of Herman's letters tedious to read. The letters are depressingly redundant and the difficult font only served to encourage me to skim through them.
I have met Nora Percival and my copy of her book is signed for me. I am so happy that her congenital optomism was not dampened by her closeness to war, poverty, illness and depression. A lesser person would not have been able to pick up the pieces of shattered childhood and troubled, albeit loving, young adulthood to live a long and happy life as she has done.