Missmeganbunny’s Weblog

I pretty much just closed the book Self-Help by author Lorrie Moore. Funny story there… I had actually begun reading it a few weeks ago, but was so bored by the first short story (entitled How To Be An Other Woman) that I decided to ditch it and start on my next book. Which happened to be the last book I reviewed here in my blog. Ironically, some of the same subject matter that had bored me in Self-Help immediately re-appeared in Before I Wake. The books are written by totally different authors. Anywho, after I finished my last book, I decided to try Self-Help once more, to see if it would redeem itself to me. And guess what? It did.

Self-Help is a short story collection written by Lorrie Moore. After reading it, I just had to read up on her to find out who she is. Turns out, she’s won quite a few short fiction awards and has a couple of other books out that I’d like to read. Self-Help came out in 1985, so it’s early stuff for her. Apparently, almost all the the stories come from her master’s thesis at Cornell.

I was thrown off at first by the voice of the stories. Almost all of them seem to be written in… second person? It reads, obviously, like a twisted self-help book. Take How To Be An Other Woman, for example. Moore tells us what to do in conducting an affair, in a darkly witty way. Several of the stories were concerning terminal illness, and those that were not were about unfaithfulness in a relationship. It’s black comedy, really.

I really enjoyed the story To Fill. It’s about an overweight woman who is pilfering money from her job, and really doesn’t seem to care if she gets caught. She visits her senile mother in the hospital often and brings her presents each time. The story unfolds as she realizes her husband is cheating on her again, after he had been found out the year before and swore he’d change. Then, her pilfering at work gets brought to light, and she is fired. A few shocking and darkly funny things happen. Yada yada.

The real charm in this book, to me, was the voice. Like it was being read aloud to me by a monotonous, but strangely comforting voice. It did the trick of opening up my mind, and left me where any good piece of reading material should leave me– yearning for more.

Before I Wake is a story about a couple who have a baby girl after years of saying “sure, we want kids… but just not now“. The story starts when Simon and Karen Barrett’s daughter, Sherilyn (Sherry, for short) is three years old. The book opens with the dreadful scene of Karen taking her daughter on a walk to the mall. They cross what seems to be a clear street, when an unseen semi-truck hits the little girl. After a long, agonizing hospital stay, the doctor informs the Barretts that their daughter is confirmed to be “brain-dead”. The Barretts agree to have the plug pulled, and just as their daughter slips into the unknown, she comes back. Well, physically, that is. She begins respiration on her own, and becomes physically self-sustained. However, her brain function does not return.

Simon Barrett is having an affair with a lady named Mary. Shortly after Sherry returns home, Simon tells his wife about the affair. Karen insists Simon leave, and she assumes the responsibility of caring for Sherry, along with a staff of nurses.

One of the nurses notices that her arthritis has virtually disappeared. She suspects that Sherry may have had something to do with it. She calls her sister, who is dying of cancer, and arranges for her to come and secretly put Sherry’s suspected powers of healing to the test. Sherry’s nurse lays the little girls hand on her sisters breast. Within a few days, the cancer is declared in remission. Word starts to get around, and it seems that everyone but the Barretts know about little Sherry’s “powers”.

An article is printed in the newspaper about it, and people begin to come from near and far to be healed by Sherry. Simon realizes he has to step out of his whirlwind affair and be present for his wife and daughter. Together, the Barretts decide to allow the sick and injured people to come in a see their daughter. They make it clear that they are giving no guarantees, but they just can’t cold-heartedly turn all of these believers away. Karen feels that if there were any remote possibility in the world that her own daughter might be healed, she would certainly give it a try, no matter how crazy it seemed. So, the Barretts begin showing people in, one at a time, to see their little girl.

The family and the people who had come to be healed have to face a very ominous man and his followers who are protesting what is happening. They believe that Sherry is a false prophet, and that by “clearing the path for His return”, they are doing the work of God. The Barretts continually dodge dangerous situations posed by this group. The police have decided not to come to the family’s aid because of a mix-up of personal interests. The group of protesters almost claim Sherry forever, until the biggest miracle of all happens.

Okay– now for the good part… my opinion of this book. From the first page, I was hooked. Having just recently attended the funeral of a three year old boy, and seeing the grief of parents mourning a child taken too soon, the depiction of the Barrett’s devastation was crystal clear. I don’t usually cry when reading fiction, but I must say that this book nearly brought tears to my eyes a few times, and certainly did linger in my mind over the entire course of the 2 days it took me to finish it. It truely was, as the Edmonton Journal said, “One of those books you just don’t want to put down until you’ve read to the last page”.

Equally intense as the parts about Sherry was the plot of Simon and Karen’s relationship. In that sense, it did have a happy twist at the end. I wouldn’t call it a “happy ending”. I found myself wanting to plunge myself into the story and take those two and tie them together. It felt like they were real people, and everyone but them knew that they were absolutely destined to be together.

This book got me thinking about something I’ve never considered before. You often hear about couples separating after the loss of a child, and I’ve always wondered “why? It seems like they’d need each other more than ever at a time like that”. While reading this story, I visualized it happening to my husband and me, and I realized how hard it would be to grieve alongside of someone else. How everything they would do would seem wrong, not good enough, insensitive. What would seem like your weakest, most vulnerable point is actually your strongest, because you are holding on with a death grip to the child’s memory, and to not letting it go. Like a mother bear who’s cub has been stolen, you’d be pumped with adrenaline, waiting for someone to try to take the memory away.