Rating: 4/5
This is the sort of book that I would normally miss because of its obscurity and because I also have Dickens on my shelf. When I read that it is a “coming of age novel for teenagers and young adults”, I was reminded of my past experiences with these mopey, mindless books, namely that with I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith, a novel which I have unfortunately had to commit to memory to remind myself to never read anything similar. But then, for some reason, I wrote Jacob Have I Loved on my to-read list, and of course it suddenly became a necessity that I should read it. I’m glad that I did, for I was pleasantly surprised.
The book is written in the perspective of Sara Louise “Wheeze” Bradshaw, and is set on a small Chesapeake island called Rass, during WWII. Louise lives with her docile mother, seaman father, antagonistic grandmother, and beautiful twin Caroline. Louise, who is thirteen in the beginning of the novel and in her twenties by the end, often feels unfairly overlooked due to the presence of her radiant and perfect sister, which is understandable because she is undeniably is. Louise tries to adapt to this childhood of neglect by pretending that she doesn’t care, but really it affects her deeply.
A key theme in the book is religion. Brought up by a strictly Methodist family, Louise lives, for the first half of the book, in fear of God and the eternal damnation that her half-insane grandma constantly prognosticates to the poor bewildered teenager. For all her prophecies, though, it isn’t until her grandmother cites Romans 9:13 that Louise, enraged, decides to leave behind her religion forever.
I stiffened at the sound of her hoarse whisper. “Romans nine thirteen,” she said. “‘As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.'”
Instantly associating Jacob with the favoured Caroline and the hated Esau with herself, a panicked Louise checks in her Bible to find the speaker of that quote.
Romans, the ninth chapter and the thirteenth verse. The speaker was God. I was shaking all over. … There was, then, no use struggling or even trying. … God had chosen to hate me. And if my heart was hard, that was his doing as well.
It doesn’t take long for Louise to completely ditch her religious background and struggle through a life of eternal neglect by herself. She states only pages later that “God, if not dead, was far removed from my concern.” Later on, when being pressured by her ever-interfering family to turn back to her faith (and marry), she claims that “without God, or a man, I could still conquer a small corner of the world─if I wanted to.”
If there was one thing wrong with this book, it was the ending. Though it was not exactly unhappy, it was not happy either. Louise leaves behind the confines of Rass and religion, her irritating family and the shadow of her forever perfect sister and studies medicine at university. Though she was at first determined to become a doctor, she annoyingly buckles under societal pressure, pursuing a career in midwifery instead because that was considered a more proper career for women in those times. Marrying a widower with an unpronounceable name and settling down far from Rass, the book concludes with Louise mourning the childhood she lost on the little Chesapeake island in the 1940s.