Recent Reviews
The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
This beautiful book, The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman, illustrates how good people make poor choices. Isabel and Tom Sherbourne, a young married couple, are the lighthouse keepers and only inhabitants on Janus Rock, a tiny island off the coast of Western Australia. Isabel feels grief for the loss of her two brothers who died in WWI. Tom feels guilt that he killed enemy soldiers in the same war. Their quiet life on this island offers them solace.
After three miscarriages, Isabel is bereft; Tom wants to make her pain go away. When a towboat with a dead man and a live baby appear on their little island, they care for the infant and soon consider her their daughter. Isabel represses thoughts about the baby’s birth mother while Tom wants to notify the proper authorities. They both have experienced so much loss; they create a narrative that allows them to live with themselves.
They name the little girl Lucy and the family lives peacefully. As the months pass, Isabel suppresses inconvenient questions, while her husband struggles with the morality of their decision. As the baby grows into a young girl, the guilt is too much for Tom. On a trip back to the mainland, he learns the identity of Lucy’s birth mother, Hannah Roennfeldt. Tom sends Hannah a note letting her know her little girl is safe. Soon, the tidy world that Tom and Isabel have constructed falls apart. Events cascade like a waterfall, and all the characters wrestle with what is best for Lucy. Tom and Isabel each experience betrayals and their old demons push into the present.
I admire this heartbreaking novel because Stedman does not create characters that are good or evil. She creates good people who struggle with conflicting emotions and desires. Her book beautifully explores the complexity of human emotion and the role that past pains have in shaping present choices. All the characters suffer and I feel empathy for each of them.
The Woman Upstairs By Claire Messud
The Woman Upstairs, by Claire Messud, explores the emotional life of Cambridge, Massachusetts schoolteacher Nora Eldridge. Forty-two years old and unmarried, Nora feels an immediate bond with Reza Shahid, a new boy in her 4th grade class. Within weeks, Nora babysits for Reza and shares dinners with his parents. This new family dominates Nora’s thoughts and feelings.
This impressive novel is structured around Nora’s reflections about the unraveling of her relationship with the Shahid family. Nora writes in rich detail about her inner life and acknowledges her maternal feelings toward Reza. She feels an alliance with Sierna, Reza’s mom, because of their shared interest in art and delights in her long discussions with Skandar, Reza’s dad. Her interactions with the family provide Nora with a feeling of connection, contentment and excitement. Then poor communication and bad choices cause irreparable damage to their relationships. There are many betrayals, but the level of consciousness about the betrayals is for the reader to determine.
Messud’s novel explores the bewildering number of factors at work in communication between people. Nora attempts to scrutinize her choices with as much consciousness as she possesses. Her efforts are admirable, but her own unique perspective limits her analysis. The very complexity of human communication frustrates her attempt to understand. As Nora says, “It is the strangest thing about being human: to know so much, to communicate so much, and yet always to fall so drastically short of clarity, to be, in the end, so isolate and inadequate. Even when people try to say things, they say them poorly, or obliquely, or they outright lie, sometimes because they are lying to you, but as often because they’re lying to themselves.”
Messud’s ambitious novel grabbed my attention. It was as if a friend asked me to analyze why a relationship ended. I felt invited to enter and explore the inner world of Nora Eldridge. When the novel ended, I exited her world with empathy.
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” stated William Faulkner. In Elizabeth Strout’s insightful book The Burgess Boys, Strout creates a tragic and compelling story about three adult siblings who have not dealt with their past. Strout deftly explores their adult selves and the unconscious emotional wounds that they buried in their younger selves and dominated their psychological development as they aged.
Set in the late 2000's, Jim and Bobby Burgess live in New York City, while their sister Susan remains in their hometown of Shirley Falls, Maine. The three siblings have different education backgrounds, income levels, and marital situations. They function as adults, yet their emotional and psychological lives feel stunted, and for good reason.
(Spoiler Alert) In their youth, the three siblings were present during a horrible tragedy that resulted in the death of their father. It appears they never processed the event. Too much guilt and pain. Their lives have been affected by the events of that day. To varying degrees they feel self-doubt, alienation and disconnection in their adult lives. They overcompensate and project their feelings into other aspects of their lives. It is hard stuff.
When Susan’s son Zach is arrested, Jim and Bobby return to Shirley Falls to assist them. The crisis serves as a catalyst and the siblings begin to gingerly unpack their collective baggage and exorcise their demons. Strout creates a powerful, moving and restrained story. Though I would have liked a more cathartic ending, one that involved more talking and understanding, I think Strout’s depiction is realistic. By the end of the book, I stopped seeing these siblings as adults, and viewed them instead as three young children trapped in a narrative from which they might finally escape.
