A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly- Review

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly is an inspiring coming-of-age novel about a girl who makes a wish to her dying mother and finds herself torn between looking after her family or moving to New York City to pursue her dreams of being a writer.

My Book Review Rating:

Fiction or non-fiction?

Jennifer Donnelly has taken the true events of a murder that rocked turn-of-the-century America and added her own voice to the story to turn this into an inspiring work of fiction.

Why did you decide to read this book?

This one was on the list for the New Author Challenge 2010. I’m pretty sure that I got the book via one of the book swap websites, and it was sitting on the ‘to be read’ shelf alongside A Gathering Light by the same author which I assumed was a sequel.

When I started to read the book it felt really familiar to me, I checked the archives here at Blue Archipelago in case I’d read it and forgotten to move it to the ‘read’ shelf. But no, I haven’t reviewed it. So I kept on reading and I knew that I’d read the story before. So I checked out the ‘read’ shelf and found a copy of A Gathering Light… which it turns out is the same book but it was just given a different name for the UK release. Thanks to a faded bus ticket tucked inside I saw that I first read this one back in December 2003!

I figured if it was good enough to stay on the ‘for keeps; book case I might as well read it again

Summarise the plot – without revealing the ending!

The novel is set in the early 1900s and the main character is a young girl by the name of Mattie Gokey. She lives on a farm with her father and her younger sisters and dreams of being an author. She goes to school with her friend Weaver who is a black boy determined to be treated as an equal and together they plan to pass their entrance exams and move to New York City to go to college.

Plans are changed when they both find themselves working at a local hotel for the summer and Mattie speaks to a young woman named Grace who begs her to burn a stack of letters written to her beau. Later that same night Grace is dragged from the river in what looks like a boating accident gone horribly wrong.

Mattie reads the letters and uncovers a truth that changes the way she looks at her own life.

What did you like about this book?

Donnelly does an excellent job of creating believable and endearing characters. I really liked the way she took Grace’s letters and wove a whole story around them.

What did you think of the main character?

Mattie is quite inspiring, at a young age she is forced to become the mother figure to her younger siblings and help her father to run the farm when her elder brother runs away. She has an inner strength and beauty that many people can only wish for.

Are there any other interesting characters in the book?

Weaver deserves a mention. He gets himself in many a scrape during the novel, but he has a strong heart and a passion for changing the world

Share a favourite scene from the book:

There’s a great scene in the book where the girls that Mattie works with at the hotel get their own back on ‘Table Six’ who has a habit of sharing parts of himself with the girls that he shouldn’t.