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Across the Page: April 2010

This month’s Across the Page features three extremely different books: Chang-Rae Lee’s harrowing tale of love and war, The Surrendered; Terry Galloway’s evocative memoir Mean Little deaf Queer; and Susan Gabriel’s charming story of two friends who fall in love after 30 years of separation, Seeking Sara Summers.

The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee (Riverhead Books)

Chang-Rae Lee’s fourth and latest novel, The Surrendered, is a gripping and compelling story that follows the lives of three characters: June Han, a Korean-American dying of cancer and trying to find her son who left home years ago to travel; Hector Brennan, the missing son’s estranged father and a veteran of the Korean War; and Sylvie Tanner, a missionary wife running an orphanage during wartime Korea – once the object of June and Hector’s love, lust and devotion, her death now haunts both characters.

Hector and June, an unlikely pair, reunite in June’s effort to locate their son and as they travel through Europe we learn the story of how they met years ago as he was making his way to the orphanage to find work.

June lost her entire family during the war – including a tragic accident that took the lives of the younger siblings June was left to care for after her parents died. The accident and the loss shape June’s story and life – “she had a heart that craved more readily than it accepted.” Hector, too, is troubled by a complicated past that includes brutal memories from the war and believing he was responsible for his alcoholic father’s death.

The enchanting Sylvie represents something different to Hector and to June, but both try to turn her into a figure of redemption. For Hector, Sylvie is as “broken” as he is and an escape from his immediate and distant past. For June, Sylvie awakens her sexuality and desire, but through the potential for adoption she also represents a literal way out of June’s worn-torn country.

But as charming and beautiful as Sylvie is, she has her own haunts, including addiction, infertility and a past she, too, is trying to overcome. In many ways, she is destined to let Hector and June down – and she does, of course, only to pay severe consequences.

Lee deftly moves from character to character, past to present, war-ravaged Korea to New York City in the late eighties, creating a tremendous amount of compassion for these very troubled and flawed characters. The prose is lush and engaging-again, whether Lee is writing about war or love, desire or starvation, longing or grief. Highly recommended.

Mean Little deaf Queer by Terry Galloway (Beacon Press)

Terry Galloway’s memoir, Mean Little deaf Queer, is as open and revealing as its title.

When Galloway was nine years old, “the voices of everyone I loved had all but disappeared.” This was before anyone knew that she was actually going deaf. It was before her grades began to slip because she was no longer sitting in front of the classroom and therefore couldn’t hear the teacher. It was before the school performed ear and eye tests, which finally revealed Galloway’s secret.

The loss of hearing was not the only disconcerting change Galloway experienced at this time. Shortly after her family moved from Berlin, where her father was stationed by the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps after World War II, to Fort Hood, Texas, Galloway began having what she called “visions,” or episodes where she would lose touch with her body and hear voices.

As it turns out, Galloway was suffering the effects of a mycin antibiotic her mother had been given while pregnant in Germany. The medicine, Galloway writes, “wreaked havoc on my fetal nervous system and, later, like some evil curse, turned the body I loved into an object of loathing.”

After Galloway was diagnosed and fitted with the proper aids, her world began to change even more: “The medical establishment had no cures for what ailed me, but alas, they had remedies. What they offered were thick, translucent-framed army-issued glasses for my weak eyes, and a box-sized hearing aid with two pink wires snaking up to flesh-colored molds plugged into my dying ears.”

The new gear was not only humiliating, but it turned a private struggle into a public one. It also made Galloway, understandably, angry and bitter. As a child, Galloway soon began to identify with boys as a means to gain power and control. She often took her resentment out on girls, even though from a young age she was developing intense and passionate feelings for them.

Galloway did not know any other deaf people and the experience was isolating and lonely, particularly coupled with her emerging sexuality. When Galloway first went to college and finally got into theater (a path she worked hard to pave) her perspective slowly grew and eventually she began traveling the world in theater groups and put on a one-woman show.

Mean Little deaf Queer explores Galloway’s personal journey alongside the politics of the deaf community (there’s a reason “deaf” is lowercase in the book’s title) and what it means to be considered an “other” through a thoughtful and revealing lens. A unique book.

Seeking Sara Summers by Susan Gabriel (Wild Lily Arts)

After twenty five years of marriage to a man named Grady, Sara Summers Stanton did not think that reuniting with her childhood best friend, Julia, would change the course of her entire life.

Susan Gabriel’s Seeking Sara Summers opens with Sara at a literal crossroads: “Sara Stanton stopped at an intersection and stared at the red traffic light ahead of her. She wasn’t the type to go off driving into the night.”

Sara has spent her life in the same small town-she teaches at the high school she attended as a student-but inspired by the scare of breast cancer, she’s decided to take a sabbatical and to travel to Italy to visit Julia who she has not seen in thirty years.

The visit takes a surprising turn when Sara’s feelings for Julia turn romantic, but though her attraction is returned, she struggles with the life she has back home with Grady and her three grown children.

Gabriel renders Sara’s growing attraction and conflict with insight. There is a real sense of what is at stake for all three of these characters: Sara, Julia and Grady. A beautiful and powerful story.

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