Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” -Romans 9:13
Jacob Have I Loved is a fascinating story of places and emotions that are hard and truly startling. It pulls you in and has you hanging on every word. In the end, you leave feeling unsettled and desperate for the spirits of the characters. It is one of the least sugarcoated stories I have found, and, my, does it hit you. Only the book can do itself justice, but I will try to give it an accurate review.
Summary
Sarah Louise Bradshaw, who goes by “Wheeze,” is a young girl who lives on the island of Rass. Rass is isolated by water from the mainland and has a very small population. Its main area of commerce is crabbing, which includes catching and selling the crabs that live in the island’s swampy, ocean-fed terrain. The island is slowly losing more land to the swamps and more people as people move to the mainland. It is a poor place that struggles for survival against the intense elements of the ocean.
Wheeze’s twin sister, Caroline, is famous in the town. She is a very beautiful girl who is extremely musically talented. She gets special music lessons on the mainland and is a kind of mascot for the island people. Wheeze, a tomboy with no particular talents aside from crabbing, is constantly in her sister’s shadow. She feels jealous and guilty for being jealous and constantly questions her worth.
The book follows her as she grows up. She and her friend build a relationship with a man in his seventies who has moved back to the island. We get to see them grow close to him and help him rebuild his life. Wheeze feels romantic feelings for him and is devastated when he decides to marry an old sweetheart. While this detail feels very gross, the crush and handling that disappointment decide a lot of what she becomes.
She learns throughout the years how to not take her sister’s many seeming “wins” over her personally. When her sister gets to go to a very important music school, it is very hard for her. When Caroline marries Wheeze’s best friend, who Wheeze had started to get feelings for, it is another incredibly hard blow. But eventually, she manages to right her life. She ends up going to school to study medicine and starting a practice in a rural mountain village desperately in need of help.
The Deep Side
Throughout the book, Wheeze struggles with this feeling of condemnation. Her grandmother, who struggles with mental health issues that at that time were not understood, constantly hurls accusations from the Bible against her. She is especially bothered by the verse from the Bible about the twins Jacob and Esau that quotes God as saying, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” She is convinced that God hates her and loves the beloved Caroline instead. She struggles with low self-esteem and dislike for those around her. She feels forgotten, left to crab for a little money while her sister pursues her passion.
Some of these things are hard to read about. They are graphic and intense and it can make us uncomfortable. Many times Wheeze feels as if she is losing control. We, as humans, are naturally afraid of the idea of losing control. We are afraid to see these things she struggles with within ourselves. But are not our troubles now so very similar to hers in many ways? The constant comparison game we are expected to play, the lie that someone else is always better off than us, the fear of rejection and condemnation we experience.
This book is very realistic as to the almost impossible nature of getting rid of these thought habits when they are pressed into our brain. It shows the troubling journey of retraining yourself to understand your worth independent of how others treat you. It is a message of hope but also scary. We have to work very hard to get ourselves out of the loop we have fallen into.
The story of Jacob Have I Loved is a moving coming of age story. I highly recommend trying to fit it in this month. It is very revealing of human nature and our selfish tendencies. But it is also an important reminder that we have to get out of the places we get trapped in, whether metaphorically or literally speaking. The process is very rigorous and may feel impossible, but we have to embrace it and do the work. Then and only then can we reach the mountain.