New Book Alert: blue:season by Chris Lombardi; Disturbing But Meaningful Look Into Mental Illness and Academic Obsession

 

New Book Alert: blue:season by Chris Lombardi; Disturbing But Meaningful Look Into Mental Illness and Academic Obsession

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Chris Lombardi's novel blue:season is a disturbing book because many academic geniuses who also have mental illnesses might understand, even relate to this book. They may recognize the point when their research becomes an obsession and takes over their life. They feel at one with their pursuit of that specific knowledge and have a hard time separating their life from their work. In this particular case, that obsession has terrifying results.

Molly O'Donnell comes from a very intellectual family. Her father was fascinated with James Joyce. So much so that he named his children after various Joycean characters: Molly, Emma, Anna, Leopold, Stephen. Unfortunately, he died of an aneurysm sending his widow to dissolve into an alcoholic daze. 

Molly, who was very close to her late father, deeply feels his loss. She decides to do her postgraduate thesis on Joyce and Finnegan's Wake. However, she becomes fascinated with the story of Lucia Joyce, James' daughter who trained as a dancer, had various unhappy relationships, suffered a mental breakdown, and spent forty years of her life in and out of mental institutions before she died in 1982. Her research into Lucia's life is so compelling that Molly begins to think of her, even seeing her. She has trouble separating herself from Lucia to the point that she ends up in a psychiatric hospital convinced that she is Joyce's daughter.

blue:season captures the voice of someone who is very brilliant, but clearly going through psychological turmoil. Lombardi handles the intelligence and fragility of such a character rather well. Molly's first person narration is full of literary references, quotes from songs and plays, and a stream of conscious thoughts where she rambles on and on, sometimes repeating herself. The writing style can be a difficult chore to read but it helps to characterize her thought process. 

Of course this style is meant to echo the work of other writers like Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Joyce himself who often wrote about troubled characters and had psychological and emotional illnesses themselves. These writers and Lombardi were very interested in the human psyche and how the mind flickers about from one subject to another, how thoughts can be both vivid and confusing. 

Molly's story alternates with that of her siblings and friends that want to discover why Molly turned out the way she did. Why would a brilliant vibrant woman suddenly require hospitalization? What happened to her to cause this? The discovery is somewhat pat and easy to guess especially since the narrative drops obvious clues beforehand. It also answers some questions about why Molly was so driven by the story of James and Lucia Joyce and how they echoed into her own life and led her down this unfortunate path.

blue:season offers a perspective of the ways in which genius and madness often coincide revealing a mind that is capable of deep thoughts but is wrapped around a tormented soul.

New Book Alert: Mandate: Thirteen by Joseph J. Dowling; Dystopian Science Fiction Focuses On Father-Daughter Road Trip to Escape

 

New Book Alert: Mandate: Thirteen by Joseph J. Dowling; Dystopian Science Fiction Focuses On Father-Daughter Road Trip to Escape

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: The second Dystopian Science Fiction novel that I am reading this month is a different style than What Branches Grow.

Instead of focusing on the somber dark world in which the characters live, instead it focuses on the relationship between a father and daughter who try to escape it.

In the near future London is practically run by religious fanatics who force a strict rule over the population. Among the laws are that when a girl turns 13, she is to be tested for her fertility. If she is able to give birth, then she will be sent to a birthing center where she will remain until she delivers the allotted amount of children. 

Michael and his wife, Allison are at a crossroads in their relationship. Their daughter, Hope, has reached that fateful age and is shown to be fertile. Allison, being the "good and loyal citizen" that she is, betrays her husband and daughter and turns Hope in. Rather than acquiesce to the law, Michael runs away with Hope to Wales to stay with an old friend of Michael's.

Mandate: Thirteen presents a terrifying possibility that could be believable. It doesn't help that similar to What Branches Grow it is shown to be a few years into the future. Michael's nostalgic popular culture memories suggest that he was a Millennial, even a Zoomer.

 This futuristic world is one which religious fanatics have taken power and control every aspect in society. Do I need to explain any further about the likelihood of that scenario? The only thing that is surprising is that the setting is Great Britain and not the United States. Of course, that may be because I am more familiar with the controversies concerning the American Evangelical movement, the scare tactics that they pull, threats against people who aren't like them, their political overreach with endorsing certain causes and candidates, and their violations of separation of church and state (and the ways that they try to sidestep that amendment clause).

I sort of wish that we could peer inside the inner workings of this futuristic London. We see the laws and how they affect most people through Michael and his family, but we don't see it on a wider scale. It would be interesting for example to look into one of the Birthing Center and what goes on in there. If Dowling ever writes a sequel, it would be an interesting approach to get a more inside look at this dystopian society. Perhaps he could tell it from the point of view of a woman who escaped the Birthing Center.

What does hold up is the father-daughter relationship between Michael and Hope. The moment that Michael processes that his daughter is going to be taken away, he does not hesitate. He takes her away to be safe. He is clearly a loving and selfless parent who would put his life on the line for his daughter.

It's normal to read a mother to take that role as nurturer caregiver while the father is the status quo conformist. But the fact that the roles are intentionally reversed in this case shows that regardless of gender, there are some who will join the system and reject their humanity and those who retain their humanity by fighting the system. A father caring for a child in a science fiction landscape is becoming more prevalent in works like this, The Last of Us, and The Mandalorian showing that love and true devotion between a parent and child knows no gender or setting.

Michael and Hope have some warm moments demonstrating their close loving bond. Despite running for their lives, they share some humorous jibes about Michael's age or Hope's interests. 

There are times where they defend each other using violence if necessary. 

So, there is a real sense of affection and devotion that are found in these characters that is illustrated on this journey of survival, courage, and striving for freedom.

Michael and Hope have plenty of typical moments where they hide out with rural families that live just outside of the dystopian society's rules and regulations but present problems of their own. There are the false safe spots where their end goals are not met. There are also the government types who follow them and want to catch them dead or alive. Then there is the secret about why these particular fugitives are important. Some of it is typical for the genre but there are enough twists that keep them from being too cliche.

Mandate: Thirteen is a strong father-daughter story that just so happens to be set in a dystopian future.