Helpful Score: 1
Stories --- embarrassing, tragic or simply amusing --- provide hours of entertainment at reunions and other family gatherings. Although many of us may take our family stories for granted, they often make up a large part of our personal history and our sense of identity. In her new novel, MOURNING RUBY, Helen Dunmore astutely comments on the power of family stories to provide strength, hope and even healing.
Rebecca, the novel's central figure, keenly feels the lack of family stories shaping her own life. Left as a baby in a shoebox outside an Italian restaurant, Rebecca has no real family and no family stories. Only as a young adult can Rebecca make a semblance of a family with her friend and roommate, Joe, an up-and-coming historian who creates a home with Rebecca. His love for her remains platonic, though, since Rebecca has adopted him as a brother rather than as a lover.
Rebecca later marries Joe's friend Adam and has a daughter, Ruby. Rebecca's connection to Ruby is even more dramatic than the traditional mother-child bond. At last, in Ruby, Rebecca has a family: "For the first time, I was tied to someone by blood." Rebecca's visceral connection to Ruby makes Ruby's sudden death, described in gut-wrenching detail, even more heartbreaking. I would defy anyone who has a child to read the account of Ruby's death without shedding a tear.
Torn apart by their misery in the wake of Ruby's death, Rebecca and Adam separate, both throwing themselves into their work. In the meantime, Joe is a continent away, fruitlessly trying to conduct historical research while living with a woman he does not love. Rebecca is haunted by dreams of Ruby in life and in death, and Adam, a neonatal specialist, seems to try to reverse the past with each premature baby whose life he saves.
Rebecca, the novel's central figure, keenly feels the lack of family stories shaping her own life. Left as a baby in a shoebox outside an Italian restaurant, Rebecca has no real family and no family stories. Only as a young adult can Rebecca make a semblance of a family with her friend and roommate, Joe, an up-and-coming historian who creates a home with Rebecca. His love for her remains platonic, though, since Rebecca has adopted him as a brother rather than as a lover.
Rebecca later marries Joe's friend Adam and has a daughter, Ruby. Rebecca's connection to Ruby is even more dramatic than the traditional mother-child bond. At last, in Ruby, Rebecca has a family: "For the first time, I was tied to someone by blood." Rebecca's visceral connection to Ruby makes Ruby's sudden death, described in gut-wrenching detail, even more heartbreaking. I would defy anyone who has a child to read the account of Ruby's death without shedding a tear.
Torn apart by their misery in the wake of Ruby's death, Rebecca and Adam separate, both throwing themselves into their work. In the meantime, Joe is a continent away, fruitlessly trying to conduct historical research while living with a woman he does not love. Rebecca is haunted by dreams of Ruby in life and in death, and Adam, a neonatal specialist, seems to try to reverse the past with each premature baby whose life he saves.
