New Book Alert: Life Between Seconds by Douglas Weissman; Beautiful Moving Novel About Living After Loss
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Douglas Weissman's novel, Life Between Seconds is a beautiful, meditative, and lyrical novel about people trying to live after suffering tremendous loss. It can be very emotional with the realistic portrayal of sadness, grief, and depression. Then there are parts that become very fanciful as it enters characters' imaginations and dreams. It's hard to place it as a realistic contemporary fiction or a fantasy or even a mixture of both.
Whatever it is, it is a beautiful and unforgettable work.
The book focuses on two people, Peter and Sofia. We first encounter them during their early years. Peter is a young child having an outing with his mother, Sam. Sam tells Peter stories about his father and paints pictures of places like Machu Picchu and San Francisco, that she promises that he will see one day.
Meanwhile, Sofia is with her husband, Gadton and their newborn daughter, Valentina. She soothes the baby to sleep with all the promises that Valentina will one day live a wonderful life: go to university, have a beloved career, meet a wonderful man that will adore her, and so on.
In both chapters, we are given glimpses of the protagonists in the happiest times of their lives when they were in perpetual innocence. They make plans that they don't yet know won't come to fruition. These moments become important because they symbolize the last time that Peter and Sofia were happy.
After those chapters are finished, we return to Peter and Sofia years later. Peter was once a bright imaginative child. Now, he's a jaded and embittered adult. He has lost both of his parents and now feels rootless in the world.
He works as a janitor in a science children's museum and frequently travels. He has trouble making emotional connections, always assuring himself that no matter how bad things get, he has a ticket to somewhere else (right now Nepal) in his pocket. His once childlike desire for travel has now taken over his life.
Meanwhile, Sofia is alone. She has lost her husband and daughter. Unlike Peter's wanderlust, she is content to remain inside her apartment going out only according to a regular schedule. She avoids communications with those from her past but still her memories overpower her. She maintains friendship and cooks food, like Argentinian empanadas, but like Peter has trouble making deep communications.
The strongest characterization can be found within the relationship between Peter and Sofia. They are neighbors who at first maintain casual conversations but slowly become closer once they learn that they share mutual loss. They don't develop a romantic connection but one of friendship, perhaps filling the parent-child voids in their lives. That friendship allows them to break from their loneliness and move towards others.
Life Between Seconds is mostly a dark but ultimately uplifting novel but one that is mostly set in reality. However, some of the most intriguing parts are the strange detours into magical realism. Peter's opening chapters with Sam for example weave the reality of their situation with fairy tales that Sam tells Peter about his father and future adventures that they will take with Peter's teddy bear, Claus.
Sofia's adult memories of Gaston and Valentina consume her so much that she has trouble separating fantasy from reality: what she believes happened to Gaston and Valentina and what actually happened to them. While Peter travels to escape his memories, Sofia remains in place and keeps trying to relive and change hers.
By far the strangest chapters are the ones that take Sam on a fantasy sea voyage with a now talking Claus. The symbolic imagery such as the boat being described as tub-like or that the ocean seeming endless suggests some things without coming right out and revealing them in the text.
While it's more than likely a vision, dream, or hallucination it's hard to tell whose, Sam or Peter's. If it's Sam's, it could be what is flashing through her mind before she makes her final choice
If it's Peter's, it possibly details a wish fulfillment of what he hopes happened to her.
This suggests a deep creative connection between mother and son as art, literature, and storytelling were touchstones that they shared as communication.
Life Between Seconds is a book that makes the Reader think about life and death and how they cope with such loss. It is a meditation on what legacy is left behind for others to remember and take with them.
