Borrowed Times by John Glynn; Decent Historical Fiction Has One Glaring Flaw

 Borrowed Times by John Glynn; Decent Historical Fiction Has One Glaring Flaw

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

This review is on Reedsy Discovery. 

Spoilers: Borrowed Times by John Glynn has a lot of promise. It's a bildungsroman about a young Englishman trying to find his path in 1940’s and 1950’s Rhodesia but could be so much better. There is a huge glaring flaw that must be addressed.

Melvyn feels rootless and out of place within the rigid expectations drilled into by his harsh boarding school upbringing and his self-involved status seeking mother and stepfather. He takes his interest in antiquities and cartography to Rhodesia to stay with his older brother Tristan. Rhodesia is still under British rule because of colonialism and there are hints of rebellion on the horizon.

There are parts of Borrowed Times that are worth reading. Melvyn’s character is particularly developed through his experiences in school. 

His encounters with a rigid class system born from aristocracy is compelling. He is someone who recognizes the privilege that is installed by others because of their birthright. They were born at the finish line and Melvyn feels insignificant because of them. 

When Melvyn travels to Rhodesia, it's to find a sense of belonging that he is denied from his indifferent family and the society in which he was raised. He gets along with his brother and sister in law rather well. There is an agonizing moment where Melvyn’s true affection for his brother/surrogate father figure is revealed.

Setting also makes the book. While in Rhodesia, Melvyn moves out of his comfort zone by doing rigorous farm work, preparing maps, and exploring the landscape around him. The book is filled with descriptions of the landscape without resorting to assumptions that depict Rhodesia as a savage backwater or an idyllic paradise. Instead it is both realistic and atmospheric. It captures the environmental and political structures which characterized the country during that point in time.

Politics are actually part of the issue. Melvyn befriends many native Rhodesians and begins to understand their concerns about the restrictive white establishment. It's a situation that we can see will create the subsequent years of segregation and racism that still mar the country years later.

However, this is at the expense of a local voice which is the book's glaring flaw. We only receive primarily Melvyn's voice, a white newcomer from an English background not from a local black character. It lacks intimacy and authenticity At the very least, a Black character could have shared narrative duty with Melvyn. 

Otherwise it's similar to a Hollywood movie that uses a white voice to tell what is primarily a story involving the Black experience. It projects the overall impression that Glynn could only tell this story at a distance from someone separated from this experience instead of from the people who actually lived it.

A Sense of Home: The Land of The Great Lakes by N.Z. Kaminsky; Beautiful Ethereal Bildungsroman About Lucid Dreaming, Creativity, and Imagination

 A Sense of Home: The Land of The Great Lakes by N.Z. Kaminsky; Beautiful Ethereal Bildungsroman About Lucid Dreaming, Creativity, and Imagination 

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

This review is also on Reedsy Discovery 

Spoilers: N.Z. Kaminksy’s novel A Sense of Home: The Land of The Great Lakes lives up to its name. Once you open this beautiful lyrical book and fall into this bildungsroman of a young girl experiencing an ethereal evocative world of lucid dreams, creativity, and imagination you will feel like you are coming home. 

Tyra Blair lived in the city of Moss in the parallel world of Azure. It is much like our Earth with similar history, pop culture, and problems. One of those problems is war. When soldiers and their trained beasts attack Moss, Tyra and her family are forced go into hiding in the town of Marigold which is beautiful but the people there are cold and unpleasant. In exile, Tyra's parents implode as her mother Scarlett becomes depressed and her father Logan retreats into alcohol. Tyra is forced to become self-reliant while dealing with trauma, nightmares, and aching loneliness. She can only find comfort in books and nature. 

One day, she meets Koda a friendly squirrel. He guides her to a mirror where she can visit her favorite books and stories. This experience opens up a brighter lucid dream world. Her lucid dreams appear throughout her life as she grows and deals with many personal issues of loss, fighting parents, unemployment, unsatisfying romances, separation, war, tyranny, and death. These lucid dreams help her survive and dream of the day when she will leave to join The Land of The Great Lakes. Not Minnesota, it is a fabled land of thought, imagination, and beauty that can only be reached by invitation.

This book is one that grabs Readers's attention and holds on causing them to remember the little details long after they are done, particularly Tyra's lucid dreams. They are definitely the highlights of this book. 

Tyra and Koda’s trips into books delight any bookworm. The duo see Lady Death tries to con her godson doctor into letting her kill his patient. A man is confronted by and consumed by his shadow self. Grandfather Frost warms an abandoned maiden and many more. Through these experiences, Tyra is immersed into worlds of imagination, courage, adventure, and escape. The characters aren't content to wallow in loss and self pity like her parents. Instead, they persevere and fight with strength, cleverness, and kindness. In doing so, they challenge the status quo and reshape the world. Through them, Tyra is inspired to find ways to reshape hers. 

The book journeys aren't the only situations that Tyra's lucid dreams conjure up. She is able to befriend fantastic creatures like a pair of adorable furry monsters who would not be out of place in a Muppet special. She communicates with the deceased who send her wisdom that they were unable to when they were alive. They offer guidance on her path through signs, riddles, and visions. Her dreams not only provide an escape from a troublesome existence but gives her the means to survive it and aspire towards a greater path.

The best book to compare A Sense of Home to is another one that I recently read, The Art of Agony by Amy Felix. They are both coming of age stories about young women exploring the inner depths of their minds to survive during dismal dark times but the executions are polar opposites. 

The Art of Agony is about Eva, the protagonist becoming aware that the world is a dark meaningless place, even her own mind can't be trusted, and no one cares about how she feels. In A Sense of Home, Tyra's mind is opened to more enlightened possibilities. She sees a world beyond the one in which she lives that gives her a sense of purpose and more meaningful existence.

 While The Art of Agony is a more cerebral introspective perspective, A Sense of Home is a fuller, more evocative, ethereal, and a more intelligent perspective. It is one thing to come to the realization that life is hard and everything is stacked against you, but it is another to admit that but to find some meaning, purpose, and value in it anyway. That's why in some ways A Sense of Home is more mature than The Art of Agony which while excellent in exploring angst and the source of it, can also be lost in, overwhelmed by, and consumed by that same angst. Why bother doing anything at all if nothing matters? Why bother writing about it?

 A Sense of Home tells us that what we dream about, long for, hope for, create, inspire, love, and bring to life is enough of a reason. If we are only a spark in this vastness in the universe, then we might as well find something that isn't harmful but worthwhile. Something that gives us contentment and some kind of pleasure about being alive.

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.

Weekly Reader: Miss Mabel's School For Girls (Book One in The Network School) by Katie Cross; Dark Fantasy About Magical Girl's School is Spooky and Spectacular

 

Weekly Reader: Miss Mabel's School For Girls (Book One in The Network School) by Katie Cross; Dark Fantasy About Magical Girl's School is Spooky and Spectacular

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Okay, I admit it. As much as I love most books and other works about witches and other magic users, I am not nor have I ever been a big fan of the Harry Potter Series. I recognize J.K. Rowling's attention to world building, the influence on getting kids to enjoy reading, and the impact that it had and continues to have on Children's Literature and the Fantasy Genre. 

However, personally I never cared that much for the series itself. I find Harry Potter himself the worst kind of Chosen One insufferable lead, a Gary Stu. The other characters are mostly flat and the dimensions that they possess happen too late for me to really care. The series falls to the standard good vs. evil conflict without much gray area interest. It calls back to the late 19th early 20th century of the so-called Golden Age of English Literature in terms of structure and subtle themes of classicism, racism, and adherence to traditional gender roles.

Many of the plot points are predictable and even some of the twists were obvious. Even the idea of a school of witches and wizards had been used before in works like The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy. When it comes down to it, the Harry Potter series wasn't any better written than the OZ series.

Not only that, but I found the publicity and media attention to be overblown, making what I found to be an average series at best overrated. (I'm the contrary sort that the more you tell me that I am supposed to like something the more I will dislike it to the point of hating it.) Worst of all, the single minded attention to Harry Potter overshadowed other books that were also about witches, wizards, and magic users that were better in quality that came out around the time but not near as well known and certainly deserved even some of the publicity that Potter got. Books like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke which was one of my favorite fantasy books during the Aughts.

Another of the books which has similar ideas to Harry Potter but is also better written is Katie Cross' Miss Mabel's School For Girls. It has a better plot, characters, and is less defined in its themes of recognizing darkness in others and recognizing power and darkness in oneself.

16 year old, Bianca Monroe gets accepted to the prestigious Miss Mabel's School For Girls, a boarding school for young witches. It is one of the most notable schools in The Network, a sockety of witches and other magic users with their own government, schools, society, economic structure and so on. 

Bianca makes friends with fellow first years, Camille and Leda and gets the attention of instructors like Miss Bernadette, Miss Scarlet and Miss Celia. When a competition comes for third years only, Bianca raises her hand. She doesn't want to show off her abilities, though they are impressive. She wants to face Miss Mabel, the headmistress. Mabel put a curse on Bianca's family years ago and she wants the curse either removed by Mabel voluntarily or by her death.

Bianca is no Harry Potter. She is not stunned and amazed by this new world where she is propped up as a prophecized hero since she was a baby simply by surviving. She knows about The Network. She is experienced and even cynical about the way the magical world works. 

For lack of a better world, Bianca was home schooled by her father to practice magic. He also teaches her to suppress her thoughts and knowledge so the treacherous Miss Mabel doesn't catch on. She is even told to suppress the magic that she learned outside of school so she can act like the average student and no one knows where or from whom she learned her powers. During her education, Bianca behaves like a spy in enemy territory being a good student but always knowing that the enemy is within.

While the Harry Potter series gets progressively darker, the older the kids get and the more the series continues, the darkness in Miss Mabel's School For Girls is present from the beginning. Many characters pay a terrible price for using and specializing in magic. Leda, Bianca's friend, has precognitive abilities but they make her so physically ill that she prefers to be alone rather than inadvertently reveal a future that someone doesn't want to know.

Many of the tests in the competition are meant to bring out the more sinister side to the characters. Even the smallest assignments like finding the student's individual butterfly comes with the caveat not to trust anyone or anything. The participants have to face their deepest fears and go through psychological torture to move ahead in the competition. 

One of the final tests puts the young witches through a personal physical and mental pain that will only be recalled if the witch withdraws from the competition. The test and results reveal a lot about Bianca and the other participants, what's most important to them, and what drives them to succeed.

Instead of Hogwarts which appears to be a kid's wish fulfillment where Readers long to visit,Miss Mabel's School For Girls should come with a warning: Enter at Your Own Risk. Warning: Physical and Mental Side Effects May Occur.

When Bianca finally gets some alone time with Miss Mabel, it becomes a one on one battle. Bianca has to use all of her self taught magic, love of her family, and desire to end this painful and destructive curse to face Mabel who has power, influence, and a strong ambition to be at the top of the Network. 

Mabel gives off this impression of being a stern but loving leader and headmistress to young witches. However, she has a ruthless cunning nature that destroys anyone who dares oppose or disagree with her. 

To fight against her, Bianca has to be ruthless, cunning, and duplicitous and hide that nature. To face that darkness in Miss Mabel, Bianca has to find that darkness in herself. It takes her one book to learn what it took Harry seven (and eight movies). 

While some could call Miss Mabel's School For Girls, a Harry Potter knockoff, it is less concrete, deals less with absolutes of black and white, and contains less of the old school Golden Age of Literature structure disguised as a new experience. Miss Mabel's has the nuances in character and plot development and shades of gray that Rowling's franchise lacks.

Weekly Reader: Losing Gemma by Katy Gardner; The Ever Changing Nature Between The Reader and The Book

Weekly Reader: Losing Gemma by Katy Gardner; The Ever Changing Nature Between The Reader and The Book

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




PopSugar Reading Challenge: A book featuring a protagonist in their 20's.


Spoilers (I can't stress this enough, BIG HUGE SPOILERS): I have a unique relationship with the novel, Losing Gemma by Katy Gardner. It was among the first books that I reviewed for the University of Missouri-St. Louis student newspaper, The Current and therefore one of the first books in which I reviewed for publication.

I still have the original review copy.

Because I read it so long ago at the age of 23-24, I was the same age as the deutragonists and felt like a contemporary. I was captivated by the adventures of Esther Waring and Gemma Harding, two college-age Englishwomen who long to flee from their lives in rural Stevenage and go backpacking in India. Like them, I was fascinated with the idea of international travel and often read enviously about students who worked abroad and participated in programs like Semester at Sea. I covered the concerts, lectures, and exhibits offered by UMSL's International Studies and longed to see these other countries for myself. Sure, I visited Italy and Greece in 1999 with Jefferson College's Educational Travel Group. Sure, I was an Air Force brat who lived in Germany and traveled cross country through the United States three times with my family, but I was thirsty for more.

That travel bug consumed me so much that when I first read Losing Gemma, I focused on the travel. I was captivated by how Gardner described every street, every forest, and every train station in India picturing the captivating setting in my head. I snorted with laughter as Esther and Gemma broke several basic traveler rules such as leaving their documents inside a locker and telling a total stranger about their travel plans instead of family members or the Embassy like all of the guidebooks and travel magazines tell you. I attributed that to the haste of travel and foolish naivety that Esther admits.

I understood the characters particularly the shy bookish Gemma being carried along by Esther, her more adventurous friend. I was Gemma, nervous and uncertain, but I wanted to be more like the bold active Esther. I wanted to be the girl who walked through Europe for a year, worked at various jobs to pay my way, and visited the places tourists never saw.

I was enchanted by the magical realism in which the duo and their eccentric new friend, Coral may have encounter a spiritual vision during their visit to Agun Mazir, a Muslim shrine. Then five years after her original trip to India, a more weathered sedate Esther, no longer the once brash intrepid traveler, returns and receives what could only be described as an experience akin to Enlightenment in learning the real purpose of her original journey. Looking for a spiritual identity and "comparison shopping" between faiths, this aspect of the book fascinated me as well.


Well that was almost 20 years ago. It is now 2020 and I am 42. I understand now that travel is not really what the book is about. Losing Gemma is still a good book, sort of. The aspects are still there: the travel, the spiritual journey, and interesting characters. Gemma and Esther are still there making the same mistakes and learning the same lessons. They didn't change.

What changed was me. I'm not the same college girl that I was when I reviewed the novel for the first time at The Current. I am no longer a contemporary. I am almost 20 years older than they are and now think of them like younger sisters or, dare I say it, daughters. I shake my head and roll my eyes in cynicism and irritation at the troubles that they endure, mostly that they bring on themselves because of their own thoughtless actions, reckless behavior, and egocentrisms. Their tour becomes less like a fulfilled goal and more like a journey of arrogance and assumption.


Admittedly, Esther realizes this herself. After all the opening paragraph explains, "This is the story of me and Gemma and how I lost her." Many times Esther calls herself out on her arrogance such as when Gemma wants to give money to a homeless girl and Esther warns her about that causing a decline in the country's economy citing an anthropology paper that she wrote in which she received an A. Five years later, when Esther returns to India, she sees homeless children and thinks of her youthful snobbery with shame.

She recalls the many locals who warn them not to go to Agun Mazir, which Esther slights as they go. Esther even pays no attention to her own common sense and instincts when after a fight, Esther leaves Gemma alone with Coral and then returns to find both girls gone and a body near the shrine.

Even the suggestion to go to Agun Mazir is one of recklessness. Instead of going to the usual touristy spots like the Taj Mahal or the beaches of Goa, Esther throws the travel book into the air and they will visit wherever the pages land on. Esther even admits, "I could have stopped it. I could have flipped a few pages and changed everything but in total ignorance. I let the book fly."


That is Esther's behavior throughout the book. She is youthful arrogance incarnate, the attitude one has in their early 20's fully grown but still immature. We read a few books, went to college, latched onto a cause and now we know everything about it. Come on, we've all been there. We knew everything and by the Gods, we expected the world to sit up and pay attention. Then, we got annoyed when it didn't.

There is nothing wrong with that passion and arrogance. It's there for a reason. It helps you understand the world and enables you to become an active participant in it.
There is also nothing wrong with backpacking travel. It helps open your eyes to another part of the world that you never would have seen.
Sometimes, those experiences can be channeled into activism or a career that inspires, leads, and learns about the ways to change the world. But that change must also come from within as well, understanding your role in the world and becoming more understanding of those around you.

That change never comes within Esther or rather it does, but too late. Instead of being a fully formed character, she is a symbol of that youthful energy: part of the world but not really understanding, accepting, or becoming involved in it. Instead she believes that visiting some out of the way local place, far from the tourist crowd for a few days, makes her a true citizen of the world. When all it does is just makes her another tourist.


Coral also becomes a symbol as well. She is a person who unlike Esther is more experienced about visiting India but she only accepts her superficial view of it. When we first meet her, she is running across the streets of Delhi, high, and we later learn that she stole Gemma's money belt. After befriending Esther and Gemma, Coral invites them to smoke marijuana and blathers on about "transbutation", "and letting your pranic energy" flow as someone who studies them without understanding what they mean. As they enter Agun Mazir, Coral wears fancy costumes and goes on about the spiritual energy within fire. She isn't interested in spirituality so much as she is interested in something new and different, something that shocks people. She is less like a budding guru and more like an excited kid playing dress up or a daredevil looking for the ultimate thrill.

Esther is right when she describes Coral as "getting off on Exotica" as is Gemma who at first is fascinated with Coral but then become irritated with "her elaborate costumes, frantic postures, tangled up bizarre thoughts, and foolish f#$@&d up fantasies about India." Coral becomes a stereotype and that's who she is supposed to be. If Esther is a symbol of the young tourist who studies a place or an ideal without really engaging with it, Coral is a symbol of the white tourist who is swept up into their own vision of what a place or experience is supposed to be like, perhaps seen through the lens of Hollywood films or books written by tourists. She really isn't interested in India because she is looking for Enlightenment or a sense of belonging. She is interested in India because it's cool and daring. She participates in rituals for the wrong reasons and she ends up paying the price for her assumption that she knows what she is doing.

Unlike the other two, Gemma is the most well rounded character. She is also a symbol of the soul who is sincerely looking for acceptance and belonging. However, there is a darkness in her journey as well as her final destination that cheapens that acceptance and makes one wonder how sincere she really is.

Esther often refers to Gemma in derogatory terms. She criticizes her friend's full figure, naivety, bookishness, and neediness. Esther empathizes with Gemma's sad childhood in which her father ran off with another woman and her depressed mother ignored her. Esther pities the young woman who was once the scholarly hope of their school but got stoned and failed her A Levels. Gemma was then rejected by universities so instead she stayed home and read all day while Esther got a Bachelor's in Anthropology from University of Sussex. Esther feels sorry for Gemma as she dates men out of her league including her latest, Steve, who is so far out of Gemma's league that Esther steals him. While Esther has grown to be annoyed by Gemma, in respect to their old friendship she remains her friend.

Once we enter Gemma's thoughts, we see that she's not as needy as she appears. She inwardly bad-mouths Esther and is full aware of Esther's romance with Steve. She laughs about how after months of hinting, she convinced Steve to get her a promise ring and manipulated Esther into inviting her to come to India. She is a sharper and stronger person than Esther gives her credit for and she is at first content to remain that way, carried along and inwardly snide but outwardly complacent.

When Gemma and Esther arrive in India, Gemma sees people like Zack, a guru whom she describes as "(her) angel." People who live without fear, she feels the sense of belonging that she always needed. Gemma's narration changes the focus from being a novel about a foolish and arrogant woman (Esther) who loses her best friend because of her foolishness and arrogance and instead becomes a novel about a lost and hopeless woman (Gemma) achieving maturity at the end of a spiritual journey. When Esther encounters Gemma five years later as the co-leader of a Buddhist ashram, stronger, braver, and better than she was, it should be a moment of triumph that she has achieved Enlightenment and is in a higher level spiritually. But is it a truly happy ending and is she really a better person?


First off there is Gemma's account of how she, Esther, and Coral parted ways. Her escape involves much deception and violence. She never feels remorse for any of it, considering it part of a higher plan. She also bears some responsibility for cutting ties off from friends and family without a word, considering those attachments as superficial. Third, she also hasn't changed much in her subtle manipulation. When she mentions that Zack runs the ashram, she can't resist adding that she lets him think he runs it.

Gemma is still an interesting character, but not a truly changed one. She is interested in what India did for her, and how it got her away from her family and moved her to becoming a leader in her own right. However, she hasn't truly let go of her personal attachments nor of her ego believing that the journey is all about her. She could come through her initial ego and become a better more enlightened leader. However, the darker possibility is that she sees the ashram followers as an extension of herself and that she has the makings of a cult with herself as the Goddess figure.


Losing Gemma is all about being in ones 20's and only half understanding the world and taking from it only what fits for you. It is about experimenting and finding one's path in life. It is about that arrogance of believing you know everything and assuming you are always right, and the shame when you learn that you are not. Above all it is about being in ones 30's and 40's and understanding that youth within oneself, laughing or crying about it, and accepting it as an inevitable part of growing into the person you were.


42 year old me accepts 23 year olds Gemma, Esther, and Julie. That being said, 42 year old me still wants to travel someday.

Classics Corner: We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates; Superb Novel About Family Ties That Violently Break Apart

Classics Corner: We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates; Superb Novel About Family Ties That Violently Break

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


Spoilers: If you live in a rural community, you probably know a family like the Mulvaneys.

They were a family that seemed large in number and seemed to know everybody. They were the center of community life. The parents were part of many organizations, maybe on the school board, served on every committee, and maybe had a place or two named for them. The children seemed to be involved in every activity in school, won every prize, were the most popular kids, and were academic and/or athletic all stars. You might have befriended them. You might have envied them. You might have been sick of hearing about them. But one thing was for certain, you couldn't imagine that rural community without them.




That is the type of family described in Joyce Carol Oates’s amazing novel, We Were The Mulvaneys. Oates peers into the private life of a family that appears large, happy, and involved, then reveals how they violently and tragically fall apart.


The Mulvaneys consist of Michael (AKA Curly), a roofer and small business owner, Corrine (AKA Whistle), his antique collecting wife, and their four children. The children are Mike Jr. (AKA Mule, Jr.,or Four), football champ and devoted big brother, Patrick (AKA Pinch), the science genius and introvert, Marianne (AKA Chickadee), the sweet and devout cheerleader and social butterfly, and Judd (AKA Baby, Dimple, Ranger), the youngest and most curious and awkward member of the family.

The Mulvaneys appear to be a very close family. They are actively involved in their community with Michael's country club membership, Corrine's church affiliation, and the kid's extracurricular activities. They care deeply for their animals and love their pets. There is always something going on, because the kids invite friends over and the house gets loud, crowded, and fun.

The Mulvaneys share family jokes such as their nicknames for each other or interpreting their pet's speeches. They tell stories, like Corrine's encounter with fireflies in December, with the kids usually making the same comments throughout. There are harmless teasing and personality clashes, but mostly this is a family that is very close, very loving, and generally very happy.

Until Valentine's Day, 1976. That night, Marianne is raped by the son of a family friend. As the Mulvaneys deal with the consequences of the rape, they also have to confront the judgement of a small town that once befriended and admired the family and now turn them into pariahs.

The Mulvaney family implodes as Michael turns to alcohol, rage, and various litigation suits to cope with the trauma. Corrine and the children also deal with the aftermath of the rape in their own ways causing the family to fracture even further.

This is a book that is filled with rich relatable characters, particularly in a family dynamic. There are many little details that those in a big family would recognize. When Corrine retells her kids the story about the fireflies, the kids groan and repeat the same lines about the fireflies (Ever scientifically accurate, Patrick always points out that fireflies couldn't appear in winter) but they always listen. One of the most touching moments is in the final chapter, after all the conflict has passed, the Mulvaneys are at a family reunion and the now adult children prompt Mom to begin the firefly story. Of course, Mom tells it and of course the kids groan and go into the same comments. This plays into the idea of inside jokes and memories that close family members share. Even the comments are repeated because they convey familiarity and comfort.

Another thing that repeats often is the family's devotion to their animals. Earlier, Judd says that his father, Michael insisted that the head of the family is their cat, Snowball, then Corrine, and he doesn't want to go farther down the line because it's too humiliating. Coming from a family that still mourns our beloved tortoiseshell calico, our queen, Houdini, gone these past ten years but not forgotten (though we insist that she is now sitting on God's shoulder running the Rainbow Bridge), I definitely understand.

The family's love for their pets is felt with the kids. Many of them have a signature horse, dog, or cat that they walk, take care of, ride, and regret saying goodbye to when they move out. However, when Marianne leaves home shortly after her rape, she brings her favorite cat, Muffin, with her so they can live with her mother's cousin and away from the shame. Marianne moves three more times throughout the course of the novel and each time brings her cat with her.

That's what makes this book so special. These details help the Reader sympathize with this family and sees them in happier nostalgic days, before reality hits, rape occurs, and they fall apart. We like and know these characters. Then we are horrified and pity them.

The family counts their lives before and after the rape, to the point that Marianne's rape becomes the turning point of the entire novel. It's hard to believe that the family who are isolated from town judgement and gossip, engage in violent arguments, and try to get as far away from each other as soon as possibleare the same family that was once so close and loving. You hate the rapist even more for hurting Marianne and destroying her family.

How the family deals with the rape and the aftermath says a lot about them as individuals as well as their placement in the family structure. Michael was once a proud community leader and a strong family head. He despairs because he feels like he failed in protecting Marianne. Alcoholism separates him from his family and his rages and lawsuits separates him from the community that he was once so proud to be a member of. He is arrested for striking Marianne's rapist and his father. He is stifled from caring for his family and feels impotent. The more impotent he feels, the more he retreats into perpetual drunkenness. He is in despair but feels helpless as they have to sell animals, Corrine's antiques, properties, the roofing business, and eventually their farm.

While Michael finds comfort in drink, Corrine finds comfort in passive religion. She was once a warm hearted woman who was devoted to her family and her live for God. She was a regular church attendee and was the type to share her Christian faith with anyone who asks (and even to some who don't ask.).

Since her family troubles, Corrine accepts her husband's transformation and her children's departures with resignation. She still clings to her God, but not for the joyful spiritual love she had before. Instead, she draws into religion as her only comfort and sanctuary in what is becoming a more violent and uncertain world.


The children are also deeply affected. Mike receives the least amount of attention, but he is someone who wants to go on with life. He is humiliated by Michael's behavior and constantly fights with his father. The father and son no longer can work cooperatively. When Michael loses the roofing business, Mike finds no need to stick around and enlists in the Marines, as if trying to move on from the trauma.

Patrick, the intellectual and introvert, retreats into his studies and his own thoughts. He goes to college to study biology, something that can be quantified, tested, and solutions can be found instead of unanswered. Patrick is also the one filled with the most rage though he hides it behind his cold intellectualism. He subtly searches for Marianne's rapist and in one tense moment confronts him with all the hurt that the family goes through.

Marianne is extremely traumatized by her rape. She was just as religious as her mother and was known around town as a good girl. After her rape, she has imaginary conversations with God wondering why this happened to her. She is shattered by the effects the assault had on her family and guilt stricken by believing that it was her fault. She moves out shortly after her rape out of guilt and sorrow.

While Patrick's journey was one of the mind, Marianne's is one of the spirit. She tries to find a spiritual center and purpose in life beyond her encounter. Marianne (and Muffin) goes to college, drops out, and then moves to a religious co-op. At the co-op, she is able to prepare food and work with others feeling accepted and useful. She believes that working at the Co-op provides herself with salvation.

However, the trauma still remains with Marianne. When the head of the Co-op confesses that he is attracted to her, Marianne is terrified and realizes that it's time to move on.

Jud has to suffer from the pains of being the baby of the family. He was too young to remember the majority of the good times. He only hears about them through family stories that he hears so often that he thinks he remembers them. He is a pre-teen when his sister is raped, so his main memories center on the dismal family afterwards, not the loving one before. As the first person narrator of the story, he chronicles their memories and stories as an observer not a participant. He can only gain access to the happy times from second hand information, not from his own recollections.

Because he is so young, Jud is filled with questions about who they were, how could anyone have attacked his sweet big sister, and why did they end up the way they did. In an early chapter, Jud sees a deer in front of the house and watches as it disappears into the forests. He thinks of Marianne like that deer: fragile, vulnerable, unprotected, and runs away to seek security.

Jud also has to come clean about his involvement with catching Marianne's rapist. He is there when Patrick makes the plan and follows him when Patrick confronts Marianne's attacker. Even though Jud is appalled that the rapist is free, he also realizes that he assisted his brother in committing a felony. His novel is also a way of coming clean over his actions while trying to understand the rest of the Mulvaneys.

The last chapter gives hope to the Mulvaneys as the children grow, find partners, and have children. Even their mother has found a close friend and has returned to collecting antiques. The family reunites again. While the years have worn them away and the trauma is still there, they are still a loving family. They can never go back to the way they are, but they can still be happy and together, even if they are now different.