The Resurrection of Tess Blessing by Lesley Kagen

After witnessing her father's death at a young age and spending the rest of her childhood in the shadow of her cruel and unpredictable mother, it's no wonder that Tess Blessing and her sister Birdie carry with them a life of trauma and fear.  Even into middle-age, Tess is riddled with paranoia and hassled by the cynical voice of her now dead mother that haunts her thoughts.  Lately, it seems like it's even harder for her to cover up her tendency toward unexpected panic attacks and irrational fears, especially as she suspects that her husband Will's extra time spent running the family diner might actually be spent having an affair, her daughter Haddie leaves for art school while struggling with an eating disorder, and her formerly sensitive, lovable baby boy, Henry, turns into a sullen teenager.  When Tess is feeling at her most hollow and helpless, life deals her another blow - a diagnosis of breast cancer.  The Resurrection of Tess Blessing gives us the story of how Tess, facing the possibility of her own imminent mortality, must set out to repair her family and herself before the cancer can claim her.

Once again, I've managed to read an entirely Lesley Kagen book and yet only realize while paring it down to its summary what a very dark, depressing book it appears to be.  It seems Kagen is a master at dealing with devastating topics with a light touch, and The Resurrection of Tess Blessing highlights that talent yet again.  Part of the way Kagen accomplishes that lightness is with her unusual choice of a narrator.  The story is told from the perspective of Grace, Tess's imaginary friend, who's always around but only shows herself in times of extreme need.  As Tess undergoes treatment and chisels away at her pre-death to-do list, Grace is always there to add a little levity and a sympathetic inside look at Tess's life thus far.

Despite its clever telling and its light touch, I struggled a little with The Resurrection of Tess Blessing because it took me a long time to actually start liking the characters.  The husband that glibly drops his wife off for a lumpectomy and then heads to work, the prickly daughter with her hostile responses to her mother's efforts to get her to eat food, and the typical teenage boy who can't be bothered by those around him but requires a certain amount of babying all the same are necessarily aggravating because, of course, they have redeem themselves with flying colors at some point, right?  Tess herself with all her groundless fears, quirks, people-pleasing tendencies, and paranoia was a hard character for me to love, too.  I feel as if she is the sort of character that moms everywhere will see parts of themselves in, but for the rest of us who aren't moms and just have one, this book gives us plenty of reasons to feel guilty about the dozen tiny ways we might hurt our own mothers ever day. 

On the whole, though, The Resurrection of Tess Blessing is a sweetly told tale of a woman's life flashing before her eyes at length.  Characters that rub the wrong way at first are all part of a touching payoff that's totally worth it.  By the end, you will be rooting for Tess to overcome her fears, see her family members for who they really are, and rediscover the life she'd imagined.

A side note on the editing - I wish I didn't have to mention this, but if I'm being honest, as I always strive to be, it has to be said.  I found the copy-editing of this book to be very shoddy.  From what I can tell, the book I received from SparkPress via BookSparks PR, is a final finished copy, and, if so, it could have used a (more) thorough going over before heading to press.  The book is, unfortunately, littered with small errors and a few pretty noticeable discrepancies in names (i.e. Tess's father is referred to with her married name rather than her maiden name on at least a couple of occasions).  So, fair warning to those who are bothered by these sorts of things as I, unfortunately, definitely am.

Whistling in the Dark by Lesley Kagen

Ugh, I have been such crap at reviewing books for the last, oh, year and a half, that I am really letting some good ones get away from me.  I have a stack of great books sitting here on my desk that were great, that I meant to review, but instead are sitting here gathering dust while I forget the finer details that made me appreciate them.  I miss reviewing books and reviewing them well, and I tell you, it's hard to do when you read them months and months ago.  This is all a lead-in to say that I am about to try to do just such a thing.  Here's hoping an exceptional amount of rambling will get me to my destination.

I read Whistling in the Dark by Lesley Kagen a few months ago after either Random.org or the recently discovered "choose a random book of yours" feature on LibraryThing ordered me to rescue it from bookshelf oblivion.  For some reason, this almost always pays off for me.  Maybe it's because I buy a lot of great books and then ignore them for years, so when Reading at Random resurrects them, it's like getting a great new book all over again, except this time I actually read it.


Anyhow, as you can see, I'm procrastinating because I barely remember the book, but it's time to get serious now.  Whistling in the Dark is the story of sisters Sally and Troo O'Malley and the revelatory summer that changes their lives forever.  Sally is ten years old in 1959, recently moved to Milwaukee with her mom and no-good stepfather after the death of her father in a car accident that left her uncle severely brain-damaged.  During the summer of '59, she and her younger sister's lives are thrown into turmoil when her mother reports to the hospital for gallbladder surgery that ends in a staph infection that keeps her hospitalized, in fear for her life, for much of the summer.  With their mother hospitalized, their stepfather on a more or less permanent drunken bender, and their older sister too occupied with her boyfriend and beauty school to care, Troo and Sally are free to run wild in their Vliet Street neighborhood. To add to the perils of the summer, a murderer and molester is still at large, one who has already killed two girls.  Sally, known for her overactive imagination, is sure she knows who the killer is and she's also sure of one other thing - he's coming for her next.

Even though it sounds like one of those books that is an unrelenting downer, there is so much to love about Whistling in the Dark.  First, there's Sally, whose precocious, over-imaginative narration staves off the darkness that threatens to overtake the book.  Sally's strong in a way she doesn't realize yet, and her narration, carefully pitched between her laughable imaginings and the true seriousness of the situation, is really what makes this book live and breathe.  Then there's Troo, Sally's little sister, who seems both younger and older than her years, a tonic to Sally's overactive imagination, fiercely competitive, and an engine behind the clever ideas that make the pair's summer go.  Finally, there's the pair's Vliet Street Milwaukee neighborhood in summer, a place that Kagen brings to life with an abundance of entirely three-dimensional supporting characters as well as the endless days on the playground, staying up late, and competing in sack races and bike-decorating contests at the community's Fourth of July block party that make a kid's summer days go by. 

Whistling in the Dark is a book that defies categorization or generalization.  Looking at it from one direction, it's a thriller.  There's a murderer at large lurking in an otherwise picturesque neighborhood, and Sally's overactive imagination constantly working to conjure up who it might be gives the book an urgency.  It's not just a thriller, though, it's a story about sisterhood, one about strength, trust, and loyalty.  It's a book that provokes nostalgia with its characters that become the stuff of hometown legends.  Most of all, though, it's a coming-of-age story for Sally who learns that sometimes clinging to that childhood "overactive" imagination can be a saving grace to us all.  

Highly recommended.

(Behold, this book came from my very own collection.  No disclaimer for you!  Muah!)