Yes, I bought this book totally based on it's adorable cover and because it has my daughter's name in the title. I admit it. I bought it for a ridiculous reason but it turned out to be one of the most thought provoking, inspiring stories that I have read all year. I hope that you will read it, too.
Emily and Einstein is a book like no other that I have read before, yet it reminded me, at first, of the TV show "Drop Dead Diva" in that one of the main characters dies and returns to Earth in the body of a dog. Now, before you judge and think that I am crazy, while this sounds nuts, it is believable. Really. I swear. Sandy, Emily's husband, dies suddenly, and returns to make amends and to make right some wrongs, in the body of Einstein, a mutt who ends up (because this is a novel) becoming Emily's dog. While Emily is the most caring, lovable, and kind person you might ever have the chance to know, her husband is not. It's very fitting that he ends up as a dog.
Through alternating chapters, and you all know how much I adore those, we get to know Emily and Sandy (aka Einstein). Emily is a book editor, struggling to keep her job. Sandy, while dead, tells us about his life on Earth as he searches for a way to "save Emily" so that he can officially pass on (although he seems to think that if he rescues Emily he can return to Earth in his own perfectly sculpted body). Quite honestly, he is a hard man to like, much less love, and I found myself loving Emily even more for finding the good in this man. Sandy, as Einstein, comes up with some amazing plans for saving Emily and for putting her back on a path to happiness, and I will leave you to the book to find out exactly what those plans entail. Suffice to say that while Einstein is saving her, Emily must deal with her overly uptight and unemotional Mother-in-Law, her new rather harsh boss, a vindictive co-worker, her crazy sister, and a gorgeous hunky neighbor. These are characters crafted to tell a wonderful story that causes both self-reflection and that inspires one towards greatness--Sandy's life-time goal, but a goal that Emily in the end achieves (isn't that fabulous?).
I couldn't get enough of this book and found myself throwing it in my purse to read, for even 5 or 10 minutes, while I ate lunch in my classroom each day. I carried it with me everywhere last week and became irritated when life would not cooperate and allow me to read. I adore books about books, and with Emily's job as a book editor, I found that I could whole-heartedly relate to her passion for words and print. These words are hers, but the feeling is mine:
"I don't remember exactly when books became my refuge, but it was in the pages of a world created out of thin air that I began to find pieces I recognized as myself. In books I found characters so real that they were more my friends than the children with whom I went to school. In the stories I loved, I found adults wiser than the ones who laughed and argued in my mother's living room." (pg. 162)
As I read these words, I was transported back to middle school, when books became my refuge. I was suddenly with my grandmother for the summer, following along on her weekly trips to the library, where I was overwhelmed by the books, the smell of paper, the potential for each book to be the one that changes your life, the places I could go without ever leaving my room, and the people I ended up loving and relating to more than the ones I knew in the real world. I was always a very solitary child and have turned into a rather solitary adult (that is as solitary as you can get when you teach a class of 20 five year-olds all day) who most often enjoys reading about life rather than being in the middle of it. It's safer this way. I've never been a risk taker. I never will be. Although now that it looks as though I might actually be able to procure a passport, I might just change my ways at age 41. I did, after all, dog-ear page 162 so that I could find that passage quickly. I never dog-ear books. That hurts them, after all. :)
The passage below made me cry. It was too personal, too real. It was as though Lee was writing not about Emily, but about me:
"I watched you grow up, Emily, saw what these stories meant to you...and I'm convinced they saved you from the madness that was your mother's life....I realized by watching you grow up that books could make a difference. More specifically, children's books could change the world." (pg. 349)
I'm fairly certain no one was watching my as a child, unless it was my father looking down. No one had the time to look at me, to watch me, and I am fairly certain no one felt the need to watch a child who was never going to step out of line for a second, for she was too afraid of the consequences. But had they, they would've discovered that my books were my life. They were an escape from my mother's madness, her crazy life that I just couldn't get a handle on, a life that I found myself in the middle of and had no idea how to get out of, until I turned 18 and ran faster than lightening. But, a children's book changed my world. James and the Giant Peach made me think for the first time ever that there was a big world out there, one far away from the one I inhabited. One that I could escape to. One that would take me away. I read that book so many times in the 4th grade that I wasn't allowed to check it out from the library anymore. The school librarian made my mother buy me my own copy so that everyone else in my school would get a chance to check it out, too.
Emily, I think, would've made a good friend for me. She would've understood.
She wasn't as lucky as me, though. She married a dog of a man (who admits in his last chapter that "by becoming a dog, I had finally, for once in my life, acted as a true man." pg. 443) and a found a jewel. One who, for better or for worse, accepts my need to carry a book with me wherever I go, my need to talk about book characters like they are real people who live in my neighborhood, and my need to cry when a book touches my heart. And who knew at just the right moment when I needed him to take me away once and for all.
Emily, may you find what you've always wanted thanks to Einstein and Max. Thanks for giving me an amazing story to read and for validating my thoughts and feelings. p.s. I know you aren't real. :)
Happy reading everyone!
:) Dodie
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