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Sing Them Home
by Stephanie Kallos
The absence of the mother: mourning and
comfort
As
Larken returns home to her small Nebraska hometown for her father
Llwellyn Jones's funeral, his death provides the catalyst for Larken
and her siblings to face the earlier loss of their mother Hope whose
body just disappeared in the midst of a tornado. Without a body to
mourn or any real answers about their mother's death, all three
siblings' struggle in silent ways as her absence touches their lives.
Larken, an art history teacher specializing in depictions of the
Virgin, fills the empty spaces with food as she struggles for promotion
and to fit in with the university's social structure. Gaelen, a
meteorologist at the local television station, finds himself in one
meaningless relationship after another. Even the inside of his house
becomes a portrait of his internal life. Given the job at a time before
all the technological sophistication of weather forecasting, Gaelen
struggles to catch up with the changes in his the industry environment.
Bonnie, the youngest sister and most dysfunctional of the three, hunts
down the remnants of other's lives in litter strewn across the
landscape, looking for signs of her mother and wishing for a child
herself, a child she has little chance of ever having. As the siblings
and their stepmother (by custom rather than a legal marriage) Viney
come together, family bonds and conflicts open the door for
transformation as a dramatic incident pulls them together.
In SING THEM HOME, Stephanie Kallos assembles an odd cast of
characters, some not even particularly likable,sympathetic, or at least
not the kind of classic expected main characters, at least not at first
glance, and yet, in bringing these sometimes quirky characters together
to tell their stories, Stephanie Kallos creates an entire universe
within a small town. Even the ghosts of former residents join together
to give the reader a sense of community that expands beyond time and
the immediate lives of Larken, Gaelen and Bonnie. The narrative unfolds
in a non-linear chronology as the past and present are joined side by
side alongside Hope's journal entries. Not only do Hope's journals
provide another perspective on the family but as the entries become
closer and closer to the date of the tornado's destruction, questions
abound, making her disappearance more mysterious until the final
dramatic and poetic twist when past and present converge.
Poetic and yet expansive in narrative style and vision, SING THEM HOME
looks deep into the human heart while also creating a vision of a
community in which interactions and rituals bring people together.
Themes of death, grief and absence join to create a story of
possibilities and presence. Although SING THEM HOME takes death as its
focal point, from this, Stephanie Kallos creates a sense of the raw
vibrancy of life at its core. SING THEM HOME with its lyrical prose
paints a spiritual portrait of a family, indeed an eccentric family at
times, and a whole town.
After reading BROKEN FOR YOU by Stephanie Kallos, I wondered if
anything could ever match that book which I consider one of my all-time
favorites. I was even a bit apprehensive about tackling a book with
grief at its center at this time of my life. This novel exceeded my
hopes and then some. Rather than dragging this reader into grief, SING
THEM HOME is a novel that soothes the spirit, creating a hope and a
gentle expanding vision of wholeness. The delightful uniqueness of her
characters and their town alongside the unexpected but intriguing plot
twists and imagery made me look forward to being able to return to the
world she created night after night of reading. SING THEM HOME is a
deeply moving story of transformation. From dramatic and unsettling
moments, a gentle all-encompassing sense of comfort emerges.
Publisher: Atlantic
Monthly Press (January 2009)
Reviewed by Merrimon,
Merrimon Book Reviews
Courtesy of Amazon Vine
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