New book: Rose\'s Will by Denise DeSio

Review of Rose\'s Will by Denise DeSio

Some books grab you from the word go and by the second paragraph in the book I was hooked by the words that the author strung into such beautiful sentences. There is word to describe that ability: wordsmith.

I am not one to give endless synopses of books. In short the story deals with a woman, Glory, who has to deal with an extremely painful childhood and who, despite horrendous abuse, tries to reconcile with her aging and belligerent mother, Rose. Her mother is still in denial and this leads to a series of confrontations between mother and daughter. Add to that Rose\'s hostility towards her daughter\'s lesbian relationship and you have an extremely volatile situation.

There are no car chases, no murder that needs to be solved...what there is is a brutally honest narration of dysfunctional relationships. Years of abuse left its mark on everyone, including on the brother Ricky. While Glory chose to leave the house, he chose to stay and look after Rose and he still resents Glory for leaving him to take care of Rose.

It is easy to paint characters in a story like this as either good/the victim or bad/the aggressor. The author side-steps this brilliantly and instead of a one -dimensional child abuser, you have Rose who struggles with her own inner demons. And her boyfriend Eli\'s narration is used as the voice of reason. Like Cicero that he is so fond of quoting, he is the one that approaches life logically. He brings out Rose as she was before the trauma ---the caring, laughing, jovial woman who is fond of dancing and whose laughter filled the canals of Venice.

But this is a multi-layered story. What is striking is that everyone knows that the daughter was abused but still they remain apologetic. As if they are trying to by either trivialising events or by furnishing reasons for the mothers erratic behaviour eradicate the past. This in itself, instead of alleviating the pain of the victim, causes more trauma as it appears as if they do not understand what the person went through. Then the self-doubt returns: Maybe if I acted differently I could have avoided the abuse and the pain. But that of course is a fallacy, you cannot expect of a child to somehow, by behaving differently, stop the avalanche of abuse.

So Glory is not only fighting her painful memories, she is also fighting for the right to be heard, the right to be believed.

In the end, Glory finds solace in the stories of Eli of a mother that was happy, content and caring. He shows her the other face of the monster who brought her up.

The book is an emotional tale and the author\'s layering of perspectives is wonderful. It is seldom that a book with such a theme is such a page turner. The author also manages not to turn it into a sulking, melodramatic "O woe is me" book.

This has been one of the best and most enjoyable books I\'ve read in a long time. I can\'t wait for the second one.