Awake

Rating:
Summary: Graver's best book yet
Review: A big fan of Elizabeth Graver's, I've read everything she's written that I've been able to get my hands on. While I've enjoyed all of her work, AWAKE shows the way in which Graver keeps getting better. A story about a woman struggling to find happiness and wholeness of self in midlife, AWAKE beautifully captures the inner workings of the protagonist, Anna's, mind. But it's not just Anna that the reader gets to know, as Graver also brings to life Anna's family members (Ian, her husband, and her two boys), as well as friends and lovers from the past and present. The story kept me reading (you want to know where Anna's "awakening" will lead her), but so too did the prose itself. The sentences are REMARKABLE - so dense and flawlessly written, I found myself going back over some of them just to savor the words. Get this book! You won't regret it.

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful, Moving Novel
Review: I read this novel in one sitting and was totally amazed by Elizabeth Graver's ability to capture the inner life of her narrator. The book starts out looking like it's going to be about raising a child with a serious illness, but it turns out to be about the mother--how much she both loves her family and yearns for parts of her old, pre-mother self; how she struggles with questions of identity and motherhood and love and marriage. The book is set at a camp where all activities take place at night (the sick son can't be in the dark), and the imagery is gorgeous. I've read Graver's other two novels and loved those, too, but I this one feels like her most mature and ambitious. And it's a GREAT read.

Rating:
Summary: Kept me awake
Review: Is illness metaphor? Elizabeth Graver explores what it means to be a mother (Anna) with a suppressed self-destruction streak who home-schools a child with XP, a disease that makes sunlight toxic. She has a husband and older child; together they head to a camp run by a rich guy whose daughter also has XP. They frolic at night and sleep most of the day. But Anna, an artist, whose husband, Ian, is drawing away from her, finds herself attracted to Hal, the camp's owner. Anna, in reaching for an emotional and poetic voice, tends to repeat herself, which makes the reading more slow-going than it should be. She's also rather annoying; yes, her situation is bleak and one I wouldn't wish upon anyone, but she's so self-obsessed that you want to shake her by the shoulders and tell her to lighten (ha) up. Still, the story is compelling, and Graver draws well Anna's relationship with her two sons, especially Max, the one with XP.