Don Quixote raises a powerful, if not somewhat absurd, question: “Aren’t we all just all just idiots in search of a laugh?”

Cervantes tells the story of Don Quixote who is so enraptured by stories of knights and chivalry that he comes to perceive of himself as a knight-errant who must go on adventures, claim a damsel to protect and honor, solve injustices, and uphold the strict and honorable code of chivalry that keeps the world in order.  

However, Don Quixote is no knight-errant.  He’s an aging, once-wealthy but now-impoverished Spanish noble who has nothing but his library of books.  Perhaps to compensate for his poverty and loneliness, he loses himself in books.  

Concerned about what is deemed his unhealthy relationship with these stories, his housekeeper burns the whole library.  Nevertheless, Don Quixote is undaunted.  Manufacturing his own story, he conscripts a bumbling, gluttonous neighbor, Sancho Panza, to accompany him on adventures he concocts all on his own.  The two leave town in search of quests, heroines to defend, rights to wrong, and lands to rule in the name of their honor. 

Along the way, as Don Quixote’s grip on reality fails him, he fights with imaginary monsters, defends imaginary maidens, and protects imaginary magical artifacts:  He fights windmills thinking they are giants.  He mistakes a barber’s bucket for a famous king’s helmet.  He becomes the butt of jokes and pranks as he scours the land desperately seeking to validate his knight-identity while all who come into contact with him bear the brunt of his growing lunacy.  

Or, perhaps his growing clarity.  For Don Quixote, as maniacally as he acts, also speaks with a fluent, eloquent, and judicious voice about honor, integrity, love, and all facets of human life that are decent and joyous and important.  Readers can’t help but get swept up in his zeal as much as they get swept up in the mad-hatter humor that follows him wherever he goes.

That mix of madness and sanity provides the crux of the dramatic tension in the novel, a tension that speaks to the very reasons to read books at all.  In that sense, Don Quixote builds a drama surrounding the entire process and engagement of reading, writing, and authorship.  Don Quixote is perhaps crazy as a result of his relationship with literature.  Literature, after all, is a collection of lies.  How could anyone become so infatuated with lies? 

Even further, what about authorship?  Who wrote the novel?  The credit goes to Miguel Cervantes, soldier, convict, escaped convict, re-captured convict, re-escaped convict, pirate, and agent of the Spanish government. He also wrote books and plays.   However, the Cervantes of Don Quixote breaks the fourth wall and inserts himself into the storytelling to inform the reader that he is not the author.  He says that the story of Don Quixote was written in Arabic by a man named Cid Hamete Benengeli.  Cervantes came across the manuscript in a market and hired someone to translate it into Spanish; Cervantes is just the editor of the translation.  

Why would Cervantes create such confusion over the authorship?  Who tells stories?  The author writes it down, but, as Don Quixote himself illustrates, we the readers are the real writers who make stories our own as we internalize any book we read.  We read to amuse ourselves, to reinforce our lives, to escape from our worlds, to gain perspective, to broaden our horizons, to validate our fears, to live vicariously.  

If Don Quixote is a crazy fool, then aren’t we all, too?  Even if this question mocks us, does it need to?  Does Don Quixote care if he is mocked?  No.  Does Don Quixote act crazily?  Absolutely.  He also acts with integrity and passion.  Even if we are idiots in search of a laugh, Don Quixote reminds us how that search is important.  Life is a laugh.  Life is also a series of wonderful adventures that give us meaning and value and character.  Yes, maybe we are idiots, but even idiots are permitted an occasional laugh.  

Published in 1911, Ethan Frome is a frame narrative set in the cold, snowy winter of fictitious Starkfield, Massachusetts. The frame of the narrative begins with a nameless narrator who is visiting Starkfield for work. He becomes intrigued by a local man he runs into daily at the post office. There is something odd about the man. His look, his gait, his stoic attitude all make the visitor want to know more about him. Similar to the visitor in Wuthering Heights, this visitor goes to his landlady to inquire. Unlike Nellie in Wuthering Heights, this landlady  isn’t terribly forthcoming though. The people of Starkfield are a reticent bunch. 

A major blizzard allows the visitor a first hand glimpse into the life of the man at the post office, Ethan Frome. When the visitor can’t make it to the job site due to the snow, Ethan Frome offers his services. This storm proves too much for even Ethan and his horse- drawn buggy, and he is forced to invite the visitor into his home to stay the night. This night allows the visitor to cobble together the last few years of Ethan’s life. What then transpires is the assumed backstory of Ethan and how he got that look, gait, and stoic attitude. 

What I haven’t mentioned here is the love triangle that is a large part of Ethan’s troubles. His wife, Zeena, is a hypochondriac who needs more help in the home. The help comes by way of her cousin, Maddie. Let’s just say that Maddie is young and cute. Readers will have to crack the book to find out more. 

As an avid reader, I have enjoyed many books by Ruta Sepetys and I Must Betray You has become my favorite.  One of the reasons I enjoy  Sepetys’ books is that she writes historical fiction.   She gives a voice to the underserved and tells the stories we weren’t taught in school.  She creates such realistic characters that must overcome terrible circumstances just to survive. There are deep ethical dilemmas, strong relationships to navigate and always a force larger than life to wrestle with for survival.  She is a gifted storyteller, who researches stories worth reading, and makes you root for the little guy.  

I had read books about Nicolae Ceausescu, and had a fair understanding of how cruel and mercilessly he ruled Romania, but I didn’t know what life was like for the average person in Romania at that time.  This book brought those challenges to life, through the eyes of a teenage boy, who struggles with daily life, survival and betrayal. 

I suggested this book for a book club I belong to, and while reading it I realized a friend of mine was from Romania.  I called him and it turned out he had escaped from Romania around the same time  a famous Olympic Gymnast .  I invited him and a substitute teacher in the school who is also from Romania who immigrated 10 years after Communism fell, to attend the meeting.  It was great to have their first person accounts of Romania during and after Communism.