Review: Burst by Mary Otis

Mothers and daughters, perhaps one of the most written about relationships in literature. Is it because the relationships between mothers and daughters can be so fraught, so difficult, so complex? Or is it because it can be so wonderful, so loving, so close? Maybe it's because it can be (and often is) all of those things. And maybe it's because it is so easy to see a daughter becoming her mother, whether intentionally or not. Mary Otis' novel, Burst, is a study in a close and complicated mother daughter relationship, a love story and a mirror, a desire to be different, and all that that entails.

Charlotte and Viva are mother and daughter, best friends, and co-conspirators against the world. Charlotte is a single mother who is troubled and peripatetic (Viva's description on her college applications). She lives on a whim, pulling Viva with her on her adventures as she struggles with an alcohol addiction that leaves her unable to provide for Viva without help from random old friends and her strict older sister, but never from Viva's absent father. Money is always an issue and Charlotte bargains for survival with things she shouldn't. Viva grows up delighted to be her mother's co-pilot in life but learning things from Charlotte that she shouldn't, especially the way that alcohol eases many things. When, as a child, Viva discovers a true talent for dance, there's a chance that she can escape her upbringing until an accident makes clear just how fragile her own life is.

Starting in the 1970s and running through the 1990s, Charlotte and Viva's relationship grows and changes after disappointments and with a more grown-up understanding. The reader watches with sadness as Viva comes to recognize her mother's demons, and to acknowledge that she cannot banish them. That she falls prey to the same demons and darkness feels inevitable even as the reader hopes that she can conquer hers. The time periods of the novel are beautifully drawn with the nostalgia of the time wrapped in the melancholy of the story. The plot moves between Viva and Charlotte (including Charlotte's past as an aspiring artist before Viva) allowing each character's feelings and motivations to be fully explored beyond their relationship to each other. This is a novel about disappointment and love and all the layers of a life shared closely. It was hard to read about all of the poor choices both Charlotte and then Viva make, afraid to hope for resilience. And yet the reader cannot help feeling sorry for the things that derail these women, to want a better outcome than we expect, and for there to be understanding, self-love, and forgiveness in the end.

Review Mercury by Amy Jo Burns

Who doesn't love a good dysfunctional family novel? In her novel, Mercury, Amy Jo Burns has created a quietly satisfying novel peopled with characters you could see sitting around your own table, some you like and some you don't but all of whom share a long and complicated history with you.

When seventeen year old Marley West moves into small town Mercury, PA, she is quickly claimed by Baylor Joseph, the oldest of the three Joseph boys and a local high school football star. Dating Bay gets her invited to dinner with the rest of the Josephs, parents Mick and Elise, and Bay's younger brothers Waylon and Shay. She is witness to the complex family dynamic as an outsider, and eventually a participant as well as a member of the family herself, as Waylon's wife. In fact, she becomes a lynch pin in the family, even as resentments simmer and tensions rise. When a body is unexpectedly uncovered in the attic of the local church thanks to a leaking roof, a roof that Joseph and Sons Roofing fixed years ago, old secrets and hurts will come to light, changing the truth of the past.

This is a novel chock full of private family drama, the weight of expectations, and complicated family relationships. Burns draws realistic characters, some of whom are not entirely sympathetic or likeable. The secrets they carry shape their characters, form the love/hate relationships they feel toward one another, and make the family how and what they are. Although the novel is told in third person, Marley is really the main character, the one who both forces change and acknowledges tradition as she comes into her own. This is a powerful, character driven story of growth, belonging, motherhood, and the traumas that form us.

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to review.