Guys! I finally finished another book! I really don’t know why reading has been taking me so long lately, but I’m really happy I finished this one on time to share my thoughts with you today.
I read The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley on my Kindle. I borrowed it from the library that way! Although it was easy and convenient, I’m still not sure how often I will continue to read books that way – I stand by the awesomeness of real live books! Anyway, this book was well worth the read, no matter what the format. “Matt Beaulieu was two years old the first time he held Elle McClure in his arms, seventeen when he first kissed her under a sky filled with shooting stars, and thirty-three when he convinced her to marry him. Now in their late 30s, the deeply devoted couple has everything-except the baby they’ve always wanted. When an accident leaves Elle brain dead, Matt is devastated. Though he cannot bear the thought of life without her, he knows Elle was afraid of only one thing-a slow death. And so, Matt resolves to take her off life support.
But Matt changes his mind when they discover Elle’s pregnant. While there are no certainties, the baby might survive if Elle remains on life support. Matt’s mother, Linney, disagrees with his decision. She loves Elle, too, and insists that Elle would never want to be kept alive on machines. Linney is prepared to fight her son in court-armed with Elle’s living will. Divided by the love they share, Matt and Linney will be pitted against each other, fighting for what they believe is right, and what they think Elle would have wanted resulting in a controversial legal battle that will ultimately go beyond one family . . . and one single life.” While the book claims to bring up legal issues that will make you think about what is right and wrong, I felt that the obvious answer was to keep Elle alive until her baby was born. Wouldn’t a mother-to-be who has expressed as recently as the day of her accident how much she wants to have a baby do anything and everything to deliver that baby? For her husband, that was obvious, and since the story is told in his viewpoint, it feels obvious to the reader as well. Of course, this brings up arguments about whether or not the baby is a life worth saving.
Peppered with flashback scenes of the history that Matt and Elle share, this story was moving, interesting, and most of all a love story. At the end of the book, there was a conversation with the author and one of the questions asked of her was the following: “There are four types of love – storge (familial love), philia (love between friends), agape (unconditional love), and eros (romantic love) – all of which appear and are important in The Promise of Stardust whether it is between Matt and Elle, Linney and Elle, Matt and Linney, Matt and Jake, etc. Do you think all love is equal?” The author answers that the dynamics in the story mix the types of love that the characters share, concluding that true love is unconditional love. I found this question interesting because I had not known that love is classified into types of love. It does seem to me that a husband / wife relationship such as Matt and Elle’s should and did share all of the mentioned types of love.
There’s more – Elle was an astronaut! Giving a character such a unique profession made the book even more interesting and thought-provoking to read. One of the scenes shared is when Elle, on a space mission, risked her own life to save a fellow astronaut. With so many themes running throughout, risking one’s own life for someone else is just another facet of the ultimate question of the book – the right to live versus the right to die.
What do you think about the issues mentioned above? What about the types of love? Have you read any good books lately?