Seeing Dell

Rating:
Summary: Exploring the variety, fluidity and ambiguity of sexuality.
Review: Carol Guess has made an auspicious debut on the literary scene with her first novel, Seeing Dell. Extremely well written, in a lyrical prose style, the story revolves around the relationships of five characters to each other through their connection with the elusively fascinating Dell, who has died before the book begins. Guess employs the fairly unique device of presenting varying aspects of the deceased girl as seen through the eyes of these five characters. Using the first person, each of the five, in turn, speaks directly to the reader about how they "see" Dell, employing every semantic nuance that the verb is capable of. In so doing, however, Copeland, Terry, Nora, James and Maureen reveal much more of themselves and the stiflingly repressive atmosphere of the small-town USA they inhabit than they do of Dell herself. It is as though we are seeing them through their seeing her, as intriguing a bit of inventiveness as it is a locution. Guess likes to explore the variety, fluidity and ambiguity of human sexuality. She is also keenly aware of the physical, psychological and emotional links between sex and power. In their efforts to deceive each other, her characters often only succeed in deceiving themselves. Seeing Dell is a study in the intircacies and vagaries of human nature, which often make it impossible for us to come together as people. It is at once delicate yet incisive, and a damn good read to boot.-- Gary Pool, author and critic Bloomington, Indiana

Rating:
Summary: Seeing Dell... Very well: Waiting...wanting more
Review: Carol Guess is an inspired writer, she gives all characters depth and tangibility... The book kept me entranced but at the end left me hanging, wondering so much of each person... So many questions left unanswered... Would love to enthrall myself once more into one of her Books...

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful but flawed
Review: This author uses a very interesting premise; the book is not about Dell but the people she left behind. And if love is more about the lover than the beloved, and I think it is, then we get portraits of some diverse people whose lives have been polarized by their love for a woman that seems to the reader more mythic than human. Her effect is carried to the people who try to love those that loved her, and fail because they are so lost in their grief. So far, so good. But I really wished this story had gone somewhere, that Dell's two lovers might have helped each other find some peace with her memory or that we had any indication that their lives would move forward at all. We are given opportunity, possibility for that but no evidence that the opportunity is taken, leaving these characters essentially static. Having pointed out this one flaw, I must also say that there is much to appreciate in this book. The author has unique discriptive powers. The character of Dell is powerful to these people not because she is traditionally beautiful or talented or accomplished, but because she is real. She doesn't play games or maintain any facade and her ingenuous nature is lovingly described. And back to the flaw I pointed out, I will now contradict myself by saying that I appreciated the fact that no time limits were set on these people's sense of loss. This isn't a book that wraps the story up in a neat bow by the end or even tries to resolve anything. Its a study of how a person's life can ripple through the lives of others like a stone dropped in still water. The missed opportunites and connections that frustrate in the context of this story are an accurate representation of how all of us live and that is probably the author's intent. So while I was left wishing for more, I do not feel I wasted my time. Its a book I can see myself reading again.