Now is the Time to Open Your Heart

Alice Walker

I loved the descriptions of the wild country. It really did feel like a different world. But, I found it difficult to come to grips with the characters; they seemed more like vehicles for expressing the author's views on race and gender than real people. However there is plenty to think about and the book does have the potential to change the way the reader lives.

Extract

When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for you life and the life of earth and people, it is like being caught in someone else's dream or nightmare. Many people exist in their lives in this way. I say exist because it is not really living. It is akin to being suspended in a dream one is having at night, a dream over which one has no control. You are going here and there, seeing this and that person; you do not know or care about usually, they are just there, on you interior screen. Humankind will not survive if we continue in this way most of us living lives in which our own life is not the centre.

Parallels