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Across the Page: Must Reads

This month’s Across the Page features three books that are so good I am jealous of those of you who have not yet read them and get to experience the stories for the first time: Room by Emma Donoghue (it will keep you up at night); The Good Daughters by Joyce Maynard (a multilayered story about two families who are mysteriously connected); and White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenway (prose that reads like poetry).

Room by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown)

If, like me, you’re an Emma Donoghue fan and have read her other work, including The Sealed Letter, Landing and Life Mask, you will know that she is capable of a wide range of styles, worlds and voice. Still, I was blown away by the absolute brilliance of her latest novel.

Room is the story of a 5-year-old boy named Jack who was born and raised in an 11×11 room with only his mother. At first, the circumstances and necessity of Jack’s captivity are unclear. His mother has created an alternative sense of reality for Jack that includes a range of beliefs: the world seen through the TV screen is imaginary; the sun is the face of God; the room they inhabit is the actual “world.”

The only interference in Jack’s life comes during the weekly visit by a man named Old Nick who enters the room and brings them supplies. During this time, Jack hides in the wardrobe and listens to Old Nick and his mother “on the bed.”

Jack and his mother have a routine that includes classes, exercise, prayer and play. Donoghue has created a new language for Jack that reflects his perspective – “If I ran away, I’d become a chair and Ma wouldn’t know which one. Or I’d make myself invisible and stick to Skylight and she’d look right through me. Or a tiny speck of dust and go up to her nose and she’d sneeze me right out.”

But as Jack gets older and starts to question their reality, and Old Nick’s behavior begins to change, Jack’s mother is encouraged to finally explain their situation. It also revives her desire to escape it. It’s a desire that Jack cannot fully understand and one that will challenge everything he knows about life in the Room.

There is so much at stake in this beautiful, terrifying and original novel about survival and love. Donoghue has created an unforgettable mind and voice in the character of Jack. A must read.

The Good Daughters by Joyce Maynard (William Morrow)

Joyce Maynard’s new novel tells the multifaceted story of Ruth Plank and Dana Dickerson. Born on the same day and at the same hospital in a small town in New Hampshire, the girls are considered “birthday sisters.” Though from the looks of it, perhaps that’s all they have in common.

Ruth grows up surrounded by sisters and stable parents on a farm that’s been in her family for years. Yet, she has always felt a coldness from her mother that she could not explain. It’s a distance that she attributes, in part, to her love of art, rather than the domestic and community-based interests of her mother and sisters.

Dana and her rootless family are the complete opposite. Her father is erratic and always chasing down and then wasting their money on his next “big idea.” Her mother is unable to cope with her role as a parent and escapes in her painting. And Dana’s beloved brother Ray is so sensitive that she worries whether he’ll be able to survive the world at all.

Dana, on the other hand, is reliable. She wants to work with the land. She wants a life of stability, eventually creating one for herself when she settles down with another woman, Clarice.

As the story unfolds, Ruth and Dana recount their very different lives and upbringings, and questions arise in Ruth’s mother’s insistence that they in touch with Dana’s family. These questions, which haunt the novel, explode in a powerful revelation when Ruth and Ray get together as adults.

In addition to being a beautiful and engaging story, Maynard deftly captures Dana’s struggle to come to terms with her sexuality in the midst of her family’s instability. And her relationship with Clarice is one of the strongest in the novel. Highly recommended.

White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenway (Black Cat)

This incredible debut novel by Alice Greeway (which won the Orange Prize for fiction in 2006) is the story of two American sisters, Kate and Frankie, living in Hong Kong during the summer of 1967.

With their father serving as a war-photographer in nearby Vietnam, the teenage girls live with their overwhelmed and anxious mother and their Chinese “amah,” Ah Bing.

The story is narrated by Kate, the younger and more thoughtful sister, and focuses on Frankie, who is as wild and beautiful as she is unstable and reckless. “This summer, the one I’m going to tell you about, is the only time that matters,” a retrospective Kate states in the opening of the novel.

“It’s the time I’ll think of when I’m dying, just as another might recall a lost lover or regret a love they never had,” Kate says. “For me, there is one story. It’s my sister’s – Frankie’s.”

As the narrative unfolds, Kate undeniably fulfills her promise to tell a story worthy of such a proclamation. With prose that is as lyrical as it is concise, and packed with urgency, Greenway captures the complexity of the sisters’ relationship with each other and their parents, the foreign culture, and their developing sexualities.

The tension radiates at home with their mother, in their longing for their father’s attention, and on a larger scale, as Mao’s Cultural Revolution mounts.

There is a sense of fragility throughout the story, but when Kate and Frankie decide to run away from Ah Bing at the local market, the sisters experience a tragedy that changes their lives in dramatically different ways.

What qualifies this book to be included in this column is that there are two lesbian characters: a neighboring couple. It’s minor, but in my opinion, it’s enough. Trust me – you won’t regret reading this book.

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