"He sleeps so deeply sometimes that his silence wakes me up...""My childhood is like an amputee's phantom limb. It's not something someone intact can understand.""There's something nice about having a shared childhood with someone. You don't have to explain a lot of things to each other.""In a year it is easy to forget how cold winter is. Seasonal amnesia is the only way to survive in climates liek this. It is almost impossible to remember the realities of winter when the sun is shining and the sky is bright.""Even far away his posture was as familiar as my own hands.""I kissed him and felt everything grow weak and warm. [He] still has the ability to make me feel the way I used to feel when we first met. Most people wouldn't believe it. Fourteen years is a long time to share a life. And there are times, of course, when one of us grows bored or annoyed. What used to be butterflies may now be something less striking than the orange and black of a monarch. Something more common and predictable, a loping gray moth with slow beating wings. But its wings still flicker.""... his voice softer than a July moon, more gentle on my tongue than a spoonful of night. "You know I love you." And the light filled my entire mouth, glowed and warmed my throat.""That's what people REALLY do when they care for each other. They say what they're supposed to say. They'll say anything to keep the balance even...""But what he didn't understand, and I had no words to articulate, was that we inevitably inherit our mother's gestures. The certain sway of hips or slow blink of an eye. The way of buttoning a child's sweater or leaning into a man's chest. What he didn't understand was that the subtleties she passed onto us were what he should fear.""[She] is beautiful in a way that suggests complete ignorance of her effect on the eye. She blushes easily. She has bad posture and will not take a compliment. She is enthusiastic about everything. Trusting and eager and sincere."
I feel that this book could have been very good, but simply fell short of my expectations. There is no denying the writer has a way with words and a great ability to paint extremely emotionally relatable pictures, but the story was at slow and at times it felt like there was no real story. What was happening was quite mundane, what held my interest most of the time was the flashbacks but they were fleeting and as the book progressed became shorter and less interesting. I struggled to get through to the end of it because I didn't really expect there to be anything happening, since there really wasn't anything happening through out the book. One page for an exciting incident, four for a pointless conversation. I honestly didn't finish the book, I made it most of the way through and skimmed until it was the end. Still, credit needs to be awarded for the descriptions, I wouldn't write this author off but hope for better in the future. (view spoiler)[ Also the entire lack of urgency regarding Violet was bothersome, irritating and extremely unrealistic. There would be no "we were thinking of calling CPS but you look like a nice guy.." they would have been called at the point that the mother has stopped the baby from breathing multiple times. Rich barely reacted when he realized there was nothing wrong with Violet and backed out of his plans to rush her off because he simply seemed to 'feel bad' and she didn't realize she was killing her daughter. Oh okay. Still shaking my head over this. The same can be said for the doting/loving father simply walking away from his children when he knew what their mother was doing to them. How can Indy have no resentment towards him for that? How good of a father can he be? (hide spoiler)]
This is an interesting story about a grown woman who is pulled back into the dysfunctional lives of her mother and sister when her mother becomes ill. The book goes back and forth between current day and the main character's childhood, painting a disturbing yet fascinating picture of a mother who had Munchausen by proxy syndrome, which resulted in the abuse of her younger sister, who was her mother's favorite. This subject matter is fascinating to me, Munchausen is such a strange and twisted illness--as a mom it is hard to fathom hurting your own child to satisfy your own need for attention. The mother's illness affected the child who she abused, and affected the older daughter who she basically ignored. Great book.
—Jennifer
I was immediately attracted to the theme of mental illness throughout the book. I often read it at the end of a rough day, because the somber tone of the book fit in with my mood. It's not a chipper, fairy-tale type of read; if that is what you're looking for, this novel isn't it. That isn't to say that it ends dreadfully, either. One reviewer described it as "somberly engaging." I think this is a very accurate description. T. Greenwood also has a sort of peotic way of writing and describing things without being too ornate in this novel, which I also enjoyed. I highly recommend this read, especially if you're interested in psychology or mental illness.
—Joy
Well this must be my week for disturbing fiction. Indie brown's memories are coming back to bite her as she remembers fuzzy disturbing memories about her own mother that loved her younger, prettier sister Lily with suffocating obsessiveness. Too, Indie is still questioning the death of her special needs much loved older brother. Now with Lily's newborn Violet's mysterious illness and Indie's cold mother's strange poisoning sickness, she returns home and to the many questions left unanswered. Since surviving a lightning strike at age 4 due to her mother's neglect in a grocery store parking lot, Indie can taste sounds, specifically all the lies that roll of her mother's tongue. Rooting through the past, she slowly brings into clear focus the picture of the puzzle that has haunted her for years.This novel was wonderfully written, and it's the first of T. Greenwood I have read. It both saddened me and disturbed me.
—Lolly K Dandeneau
