Wednesday, Jun 17, 2009

Book Review: The Lie by Fredrica Wagman

Author:       Fredrica Wagman

Publisher:    Zoland Books/Steerforth Press

ISBN:          978-1-58642-157-1

Website:      www.fredricawagman.com

Type:         Fiction

Pages:        214 Softcover

Purchase:    $11.66 @ Amazon.com (HERE)

The Story

“Coming of age in the 1950′s America, Ramona Smollens takes her cues about female sexuality from Hollywood movie stars. None is more voluptuous than Rita Hayworth, the redhead who knows how to please a man and becomes a volcano of passion at her lover’s touch, whose image inspired American flyers on their missions in World War ll and even graced the first atomic bomb tested at the Bikini Atoll. Ramona marries young to escape her mother’s house shortly after the death of her father. She takes with her a dark secret, the sort of secret one simply did not talk about and that would stalk her as she matured into her role as wife and mother, remained a devoted daughter to her own aging mother and secretly harbored an obsession with the iconic Hayworth.” 

(Above excerpt is from www.fredricawagman.com)

The Review

On an afternoon in the rain, a week after her father’s death, Ramona meets Solomon Columbus, her future husband.  Mesmerized by his odd features and his pronounced sadness, she sits with him as they share their stories while chainsmoking the afternoon away.  Later drenched by the rain, Ramona leads him to her home where her lonely and damaged mother, Trixie, meets them with her disdain and contempt.  After she insists that Solomon leave, he tells her that he intends to marry her daughter.  They avoid Trixie by a set of back stairs that led to a old, musty attic.  There they spend four days holed up in dust, heat, and smoke.   Ramona and Solomon marry and she moves in with him to a more affluent home.  He is deeply in love with Ramona, however Ramona’s past has damaged her psyche to the point that she may be totally incapable of experiencing true love with her husband. 

This book goes on to reveal more about Ramona’s past and her present.  She struggles with her relationship with both her husband and her mother and much of that stems from her past.  She is fascinated and consumed with Rita Hayworth.  It has been told that Rita Hayworth had suffered from an abusive relationship with her father.  More information on the life of Rita Hayworth may be found HERE and HERE. 

To avoid spoilers, I will keep the remaining details about this story the secrecy of the pages within the book.  Wagman has written this book in an almost poetic pentameter.  It is not a “classically” written novel, but its words bring about waves of emotion.  Many of the passages brought me to a halt and gave me pause to consider my past.  This book is unlike anything that I’ve read in the past two years and its uniqueness brought me a certain fondness for this book that I will always maintain within the walls of my heart. 

Relationships between mothers and daughters are sometimes difficult at best.  For the heroine of this book, her connection to her mother was one that saddened me to the core.   This passage in the book, when Ramona is with her mother at lunch, was one that really affected me:

“Fine,” I answered… hoping against hope on the one hand that this would be the day… and on the other… hoping that I’d have the strength to just shut up and not say anything if this wasn’t the day no matter how much I craved confiding in her… telling her things… sharing… only why – why did I crave confiding in her – she was mean spirited and nasty and never gave good advice  – didn’t I know this, so what was the lure… as we sat there… two little kernels again - each sitting completely encased in our own little crystal ball across from each other with nothing touching… not in any way… not even the crystals… as we gazed at each other awkwardly… looking for something… each of us… only what… as the craving to tell her what was going on with Mr. Columbus began gaining… gaining… the craving to divulge… to wipe away the dividing line between her and me in a desperate effort to erase the inexorable aloneness… dissolve the irreversible separateness… the crushing urge to inhale Trixie into me or be inhaled by her that could never happen… not with her or with anyone… not ever… which was what was so terrible… we’re born alone – we live alone… we die alone and when we’re dead… the horror of being even more alone… completely alone… forever!”

…”What?” I asked as I looked at her… she who gave me death the same as she gave me life so that a sense of mourning was always moving between us in big wild waves… the unending sorrow of looking at your mother… the child who has to grow up and leave… the mother who has to grow old and die… she… who engenders such thoughts just be gazing at me with that thick dark eye encircled in that big pink thumbprint… because she made me… and in making me I became part of the whole long living chain that would one day snap… and that’s what she gave me to… an endless universe of death… my own… hers and everyone’s and everthing’s… every plant and every flower… every dream and hope… but I could never mention this – oh no!  not so much as a hint… I had to be forever grateful and my gratitude had to be as big and as absolute and as perfect as death itself… “

I can’t say that I “enjoyed” this book as that verb seems to convey an entertainment value.  Rather, this book hit my heart and hit my mind.  It made me think.  It made me sad.  And, in many ways, it made me grateful.  This is a book that will bring about many emotions within the reader, which is why I think this book sets itself apart from the pack of typical fiction. 

On Sher’s “Out of Ten Scale:”

Based on the impact of this literary work, for the genre Fiction, I am going to rate this book a 9 OUT OF 10. 

My thanks FSB Associates for this opportunity to review such a poignant and poetic book!

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