Lindbergh, A.M. (1955). Gift From the Sea.

Lindbergh, A.M. (1955). Gift from the Sea. New York: Panteon.

Novel Review

It is commonly said about the best kind of stories: that they are busy plotting their next moves while readers are still ensnared by their more immediate charms. Anne Morrow Lindberg's novel Gift from the Sea is that sort of book- the fascinating and elucidating sort. Reader finds itself cooped up inside its terribly attractive, distinctive and perspicacity of life that unleashes all sorts of experiences that a woman goes through during her span of life characterized in different stages. The Gift from the Sea is the story of Anne Morrow life experiences from her early age meditation, her youth, love and marriage, peace, solitude and contentment as she settled down near the sea and recalls all the memories of her past. Lindberg journalistic style is transformed into story and series of essays written in a style which is hard to distinguish between fiction and reality. The metaphor presented in the novel with the seashells is delicately expressing the social networks of mankind. Taking inspiration from the shells on the sea shore, author tries to unleash the reality of individual's life which is wired and connected with machines that are signs of modernity and suppose to simplify life. On contrary, the more technical the society gets the more complex its structure becomes and people gets little time for their families, friends and for themselves.

Lindberg, wisely and brightly describes the shifting forms of relationships from childhood to old age, from a girl who is only daughter to the women who is wife and mother. The life experience presents vision of enduring relationships and everlasting partnership. Sea and beaches are symbols of peace, quietness and deep thoughts. They are not the places where a person works of involves themselves in some worldly activity. It is a place where people spend time to rethink their inner self and concentrate on searching inner happiness which they are searching their life long. Author has spent her childhood summer days with her family on a Maine Island. She was then moved to Connecticut coast where she enjoyed her living with her husband Charles Lindberg in the year 1929. She had a quite peaceful living by engaging herself in raising her kids, looking after her family and writing books. Then came another phase of her life when her children left for building their own families and author started extensive traveling especially in the areas of Africa and Pacific for her research work and permanently go settled in island of Maui in Hawaii. She had spent last days of her husband in the same island until he died in 1974.

Author had always aspired and tried to have a simple life, to choose a simple shell which she can carry her life easily. However, reality was far different from her imagination and aspirations. With her husband and five children she had many roles to play, many challenges to take up and many complications to solve. The life which she has chosen as a wife and mother was an array of complications and tricky situations. This signifies the role women plays in her capacity of being a wife and a mother. On its outer shell it looks very glorious, smooth and comfortable but what's the inner story can only be told by the women. She has to make sure that every member of the house is happy, healthy and routine in their daily work environment. On her way to take care of her family, at times she has to sacrifice many things of her life, of her happiness and of her inner identification and growth.

It's not just the nautical adventure across the seashore in quest of shells and admiring their beauty, the novel Gift from the Sea is a brilliant, refined stuff that is full of richness of milieu and its impression on person's life, heavily accented with colors, sounds and smells of different stages of life experienced by a woman. Lindberg story travels speedily from her childhood, complete with a capricious teenage love towards nature and its resembles to the life exhibited in her writings followed by her struggle making her marriage life successful while maintain the right balance between her career and family. In maintain this balance she has many times had to foregone her desires, her values and norms and her principles over that of her husband's and her children. Lindbergh's direction is never tyrannical. The sensitivity with which she approaches women's social issues extends to her careful observations of the seashore and shells. The organic source of her representation and romantic metaphors adds a visionary element to the work. The only human character of any sort is the singular narrative voice. While it advocates the author's presence, the raconteur seeks to achieve certain anonymity. The "I" of the narrator provide authority to Lindbergh's philosophical illustration while successfully integrating the narrator's voice as a collective voice for all women.

Though Lindberg builds her tale on the bedrock of past memories, she refrains from drowning her readers in detail; however domestic and social nuances are sketched in with light hand, portraying the dilute details of her family and social life. The emphasis has been made on exemplifying the fact of human life with that of a sea shell which she holds in her hand and observes in the beginning of this novel. The shell which she was holding was fresh and new unlike that of her life which has now become dull and gloomy. She recalls, all her life time have been past in looking after her family and now everybody was busy in their own life. This is rule of the nature, woman has to forego everything in her life for the sake of her family and in the end she is always left empty handed. She explains her shape of life has been developed on many other things besides her husband and children. It has established on her background, her childhood, her educational capacity, her conscience, her desires and her aspirations. The role she has played as a daughter, as wife, as a mother and as a citizen and above all as a woman.