Some Things That Stay

Rating:
Summary: Exquisitely Crafted First Novel
Review: Perhaps I related all too well to Sarah Willis' debut novel because I too led a nomadic childhood existence, moving almost yearly, never attending the same school for more than two years in a row, as my father dragged me from house to house and family to family (he's currently on his fifth wife--my mother, his first, died when I was six).

In "Some Things That Stay," 15-year-old Tamara Anderson decides that this move, to yet another rented house, this one abandoned by parents who couldn't stand the grief (their son died in that house of leukemia the year before), will be her last. Her father, a neglectful artist, gains little sympathy from this reader (he may "intend" to be a good father, but he isn't), nor does the too politically-correct, pseudo-radical mother, who late in the story becomes desperately ill.

Set in the 1950s, "Some Things That Stay" is a beautifully-written coming of age story. You probably won't like or approve of the character's actions, or motivations, but they seem real, in the strange, dysfunctional way that has become all too common. The born-again Christian neighbors, the random experimentation with sex for lack of anything better to do ... all seem real and believable, if not admirable. Though some readers will be disappointed that the characters don't "learn something" from their many mistakes, I think it's far more realistic that life does just go on, without big moral shifts or life reassessments. That's the way it is in the real world. Things don't always "just work out in the end."

Willis' voice as an author is clear and sharp and I look forward to reading more by this talented storyteller!

Rating:
Summary: Relaxing and reministic
Review: Reading this book reminded me how teenagers question life. I loved this book! It made me smile at times while I was reading, and think about the conversations with my 16 year old daughters. Some of the most important things in life are the "things" we keep in our hearts as we get older. GREAT BOOK............TERRIFIC AUTHOR!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: Sarah Willis's first novel is charming and intense all at once. Wonderfully direct, lyrical writing. She is a writer to watch for. In fact, she has a short story in the latest issue of Book Magazine that demonstrates the subtle power and grace and range of her writing. Read her.

Rating:
Summary: A STORY THAT GENTLY DRAWS THE READER INTO ITS WORLD
Review: Some novels I read leave me with the feeling that I have done battle -- that the author has fought with all their might to draw me into the story, into the world that they have attempted to create. Some of them succeed, some do not. Sarah Willis' SOME THINGS THAT STAY definitely drew me in -- and it did it gently, but firmly, before I realized, before I even noticed the pull. Such is the author's gift for words and for storytelling -- and for character development.

SOME THINGS THAT STAY tells the story of a 15 year-old girl named Tamara. She is intelligent -- that's easy to see from her obervations of the world around her. She doesn't consider herself beautiful -- but what girl at this age, with the exception of the most self-centered socialite, does. It's a time of life, at that tortuous juncture between childhood and adulthood, when every doubt we have about ourelves is made larger than it really is. To make things even more difficult for Tamara, she has no real sense of home -- her father, a moderately well-known landscape artist, feels it necessary to uproot his family and move every spring, eternally in search of another, more perfect, landscape to depict.

For much of her childhood, Tamara has thought that this was the case with every family. She is amazed to learn from another child that they have lived in the same house for all of their life -- it's truly a revelation for her. By the time of the story told so beautifully in this novel, she has come to learn that her own family is indeed different from most -- and she begins to yearn more and more for the opportunity to put down some roots.

Her mother's health begins to deteriorate -- she is showing more and more signs of being afflicted with the tuberculosis that killed Tamara's grandfather. The story is set in the early 1950s -- a cure for TB had been found, but patients with advanced symptoms were still being sent to sanitariums. Tamara's father is devoted to her mother in his own way -- despite the appearances to the contrary in his repeatedly uprooting his family -- and the imposed separation is torture for him as well as for the three children (Tamara's younger brother and sister).

For the first time in her life, Tamara has begun to make friends with neighbors across the road -- and the influence of that family's deep religious beliefs have a life-changing effect on her. Her neighbors are Baptists -- her own family, mainly from her mother's influence, are 'devout' atheists. Close interaction -- and church attendence, to her mother's horror -- with her neighbors gives Tamara a perspective on people (and the world itself) which she has never experienced. Slowly she begins to look at things a little differently -- not being forcably converted, but given one more angle from which to contemplate the world around her. Combined with an already existing intelligence and sense of beauty -- perhaps genetically received from her father -- she makes some astute, sensitive observations. This, from p.140, is a good example: 'In the early morning, dew sticks to the tips of the grass, winking and glittering like diamonds. If you stand in the right spot, you can find a dewdrop that captures the sun. It can blind you; a tiny, miniature sun in a drop of water. It is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. The trick is finding the right spot, the right dewdrop, the right time of day. It takes so much for things to work out perfctly, and so little for them to go wrong.'

Tamara's observations and thoughts on this dewdrop are a vivid metaphor for the things that are happening in her own life -- something that happens in a mere second can knock down all of the beautiful things that have been built up over time. It is a testament to the resilience of children -- one of the miracles of life, in my opinion -- and to her own spirit that she fights to keep this from happening, to cling to the beautiful and important things that her life is laying before her.

Helen, the devout daughter of Tamara's neighbors across the road, sets out to 'save' her atheistic neighbors. She takes the children to church with her, tells them about her beliefs, and more than anything, tries to show them by example what her faith has done for her own life. Her character is sensitively drawn, and not reduced to a Bible-beating proselytizer -- as strong as her own faith is, she comes across as sincere and gentle. Tamara respects Helen's beliefs, and is naturally curious about them -- but at the same time, her intuition gives her some pause. At one point in the story, Helen learns that she has been exposed to TB, and, instead of leaning on her faith and recognizing her own good health, she panics at first, then, learning that she has not contracted the disease, considers herself 'saved from TB'. Tamara views this attitude with some concern for her friend, from p. 223: 'It's not that Helen believes in God that bothers me, it's that she doesn't believe in herself, that she WAS healthy, that she can exist between prayers.'

The story here is a well-written, compelling one -- the characters are gently but vividly drawn, and the author's descriptive talents are put to good use. The passages relating to Tamara's father's painting, and his ways of viewing his world and his art, are particularly well-done. The novel contains both emotion and wisdom in healthy, but not over-large, doses -- ultimately, the book is carried along nicely by the story itself. It's a rewarding read on several levels, and a work I can recommend highly.

Rating:
Summary: A STORY THAT GENTLY DRAWS THE READER INTO ITS WORLD
Review: Some novels I read leave me with the feeling that I have done battle -- that the author has fought with all their might to draw me into the story, into the world that they have attempted to create. Some of them succeed, some do not. Sarah Willis' SOME THINGS THAT STAY definitely drew me in -- and it did it gently, but firmly, before I realized, before I even noticed the pull. Such is the author's gift for words and for storytelling -- and for character development.

SOME THINGS THAT STAY tells the story of a 15 year-old girl named Tamara. She is intelligent -- that's easy to see from her obervations of the world around her. She doesn't consider herself beautiful -- but what girl at this age, with the exception of the most self-centered socialite, does. It's a time of life, at that tortuous juncture between childhood and adulthood, when every doubt we have about ourelves is made larger than it really is. To make things even more difficult for Tamara, she has no real sense of home -- her father, a moderately well-known landscape artist, feels it necessary to uproot his family and move every spring, eternally in search of another, more perfect, landscape to depict.

For much of her childhood, Tamara has thought that this was the case with every family. She is amazed to learn from another child that they have lived in the same house for all of their life -- it's truly a revelation for her. By the time of the story told so beautifully in this novel, she has come to learn that her own family is indeed different from most -- and she begins to yearn more and more for the opportunity to put down some roots.

Her mother's health begins to deteriorate -- she is showing more and more signs of being afflicted with the tuberculosis that killed Tamara's grandfather. The story is set in the early 1950s -- a cure for TB had been found, but patients with advanced symptoms were still being sent to sanitariums. Tamara's father is devoted to her mother in his own way -- despite the appearances to the contrary in his repeatedly uprooting his family -- and the imposed separation is torture for him as well as for the three children (Tamara's younger brother and sister).

For the first time in her life, Tamara has begun to make friends with neighbors across the road -- and the influence of that family's deep religious beliefs have a life-changing effect on her. Her neighbors are Baptists -- her own family, mainly from her mother's influence, are 'devout' atheists. Close interaction -- and church attendence, to her mother's horror -- with her neighbors gives Tamara a perspective on people (and the world itself) which she has never experienced. Slowly she begins to look at things a little differently -- not being forcably converted, but given one more angle from which to contemplate the world around her. Combined with an already existing intelligence and sense of beauty -- perhaps genetically received from her father -- she makes some astute, sensitive observations. This, from p.140, is a good example: 'In the early morning, dew sticks to the tips of the grass, winking and glittering like diamonds. If you stand in the right spot, you can find a dewdrop that captures the sun. It can blind you; a tiny, miniature sun in a drop of water. It is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. The trick is finding the right spot, the right dewdrop, the right time of day. It takes so much for things to work out perfctly, and so little for them to go wrong.'

Tamara's observations and thoughts on this dewdrop are a vivid metaphor for the things that are happening in her own life -- something that happens in a mere second can knock down all of the beautiful things that have been built up over time. It is a testament to the resilience of children -- one of the miracles of life, in my opinion -- and to her own spirit that she fights to keep this from happening, to cling to the beautiful and important things that her life is laying before her.

Helen, the devout daughter of Tamara's neighbors across the road, sets out to 'save' her atheistic neighbors. She takes the children to church with her, tells them about her beliefs, and more than anything, tries to show them by example what her faith has done for her own life. Her character is sensitively drawn, and not reduced to a Bible-beating proselytizer -- as strong as her own faith is, she comes across as sincere and gentle. Tamara respects Helen's beliefs, and is naturally curious about them -- but at the same time, her intuition gives her some pause. At one point in the story, Helen learns that she has been exposed to TB, and, instead of leaning on her faith and recognizing her own good health, she panics at first, then, learning that she has not contracted the disease, considers herself 'saved from TB'. Tamara views this attitude with some concern for her friend, from p. 223: 'It's not that Helen believes in God that bothers me, it's that she doesn't believe in herself, that she WAS healthy, that she can exist between prayers.'

The story here is a well-written, compelling one -- the characters are gently but vividly drawn, and the author's descriptive talents are put to good use. The passages relating to Tamara's father's painting, and his ways of viewing his world and his art, are particularly well-done. The novel contains both emotion and wisdom in healthy, but not over-large, doses -- ultimately, the book is carried along nicely by the story itself. It's a rewarding read on several levels, and a work I can recommend highly.

Rating:
Summary: An Exceptionally Well-Written First Novel
Review: Some Things That Stay is a novel that focuses mostly on all that is ephemeral about life. Thus the central metaphor of this work is embedded in the wanderings of a peripatetic family of five which relocates annually so as to accommodate the father who paints landscapes and is constantly in need of fresh subject matter and inspiration.

But as the children grow and the narrator of this subtle novel, fifteen year-old Tamara, reaches adolescence, the family finds it more difficult to pull up roots each year in an act of sacrifice to the needs of just one of its members. To concretise the unarticulated stress to the family of the enforced yearly migration, Tamara's mother becomes seriously ill with tuberculosis which requires confinement to a sanitarium. Her insitutionalisation destabilizes an already shaky interpersonal situation in a family which had been successfully regimented and contained theretofore by the powerful, domineering personality of this capable, stong-willed woman. And so her removal provides the impetus for tremendous psychological change and development .

If the novel at one level is about how vulnerable people are to the vagaries of fate, it is also concerned with what is enduring in the lives of its characters. To quote the epigraph taken from Emily Dickenson's poem "The Secret": "Some things that stay there be...Grief, hills, eternity...

It is grief in particular that the author seems to consider the most critical factor in shaping our lives and creating the meaning that informs them. In this regard the house that Tamara's family rents during the time the novel chronicles was abandoned by a family after their teenage son dies of leukemia after a long illness. Having been about the same age as Tamara at the time of his death, it is not without consequence that she takes his room for her own after moving into the house.

The unfolding of Tamara's increasingly elaborate internal relationship with the dead boy, as well as her reaction to her mother's absence, mark the heart of this novel. There is A LOT going on inside of her and Sarah Willis has a deep understanding of what is at stake for Tamara during this incredibly painful, tumultuous period of her life. It is this profound grasp of what Tamara is experiencing, and the ability to write about it so convincingly, that makes Some Things That Stay such an emotionally realistic, moving work.

Rating:
Summary: A top ten book for the year 2000!
Review: Some Things That Stay was such a good read, that I hated to see it end. Tamara Anderson is reminiscent of other notable adolescents found in coming of age stories and I was happy to make her acquaintance. By the end, I was rooting for her to finally stay in one place and wondered where life would take her in the future. An excellent first book by an author I am looking forward to reading in the future.

Rating:
Summary: "Just another coming of age novel" this is not.
Review: Tamara Anderson doesn't remember the last time her family lived in a community, because back then she was three years old. That's how many rented houses ago? Every year her father moves them to a new location, because he's a landscape painter and every year he requires a new vista.

So Tamara, Robert, and Megan's only on-going relationships must be with each other and with their parents. For Liz Anderson, her husband is her only friend in the world. She spends her considerable energies supplementing her children's public education, and embarrasses Tamara with frequent letters to whatever school her eldest is currently attending. Making sure the authorities know that the Andersons are devout atheists, civil rights advocates, and so on. Views which, in 1954, are flash points for the rural communities where her husband's work takes them.

Only now, as the story of the family's four months in Mayfield, New York begins, an overwhelmingly weary Liz seldom rouses herself to write such letters. She can barely drive her youngsters to the library. When the Murphys, a poor but lively Baptist family across the rural road from the Andersons' rented farm, invite the children to church, Liz tries to argue but winds up letting fifteen-year-old Tamara and the younger ones go. Partly because she must honor their intellectual curiosity about religion, but mostly because she's simply too tired to debate the issue.

Tamara's summer to grow up has arrived. Whether or not she's ready, she must look at her parents as people and face their mortality. For the first time since she can remember, their island within the larger world can no longer operate self-sufficiently. Liz's illness forces them to accept help which the Murphys offer-as do their landlords, a Methodist couple who moved out of the farmhouse after their only child (a boy just a year older than Tamara) died there.

"Just another coming of age novel" this is not. It captures a time and place, rural America in 1954, with a lack of sentimentality that should refresh even the most jaded of readers.

--Reviewed by Nina M. Osier, author of "Love, Jimmy: A Maine Veteran's Longest Battle"

Rating:
Summary: It's the little nuances perfectly captured in this story
Review: The story begins with the Anderson's arriving at their new home after yet another move. The story's heroine, Tamara, reflects (somewhat bitterly) on many such moves during her young life. Her father is a painter and once he's exhausted the artistic possibilities of a location, it's time to uproot his family and move on.

For a young girl becoming a young woman, these uprootings have become more and more difficult.

The author, Sarah Willis, gives Tamara's voice wit and intelligence, with the slight edge of bitterness. Ms. Willis takes the most mundane of objects or circumstances - a galloping cow, painting 'couch pictures', siblings arguing, a father's exasperation, manila envelopes, church services - and gives them importance and deeper meaning. Her writing style is so smooth and easy, her characters so normal, yet intriguing and special.

A satisfying read.

Rating:
Summary: exquisite, resonant and elegant coming-of-age novel
Review: The truth of the matter is that Sarah Willis' "Some ThingsThat Stay" should be rated much higher than five stars. It isone of the most powerful and affecting works of fiction I have read inrecent years. Thematically rich, with characters who are so real youimagine them sitting with you as you read, the novel literallyembraces us with the almost desperate ambivalence and profoundemotional tensions the compelling protagonist, Tamara Anderson, feels.That this is Ms. Willis' first novel makes the achievement all themore stunning. Rest assured, this work will find its way on therequired reading lists of both secondary and university readinglists.

In a seamless fashion, Sarah Willis has managed to convey thelife of an anachronistic family in the mid-1950s with accuracy andempathy. In an era which celebrated conventional nuclear families,the Andersons are peripatetic wanderers, the journeys fueled by afather whose need for fresh landscapes to fuel his painting requiresthe family to move from house to house each spring. Indeed,Ms. Willis explores the definitions of family and home throughout,both in her evocation of place and her contrasting the Andersons withtheir cross-street neighbors. These neighbors, whosereligion-centered lives contrast with the rational/scientific mind ofTamara's mother, provide both ballast and turmoil to Tamara'sworld-views.

In addition to the author's sensitive treatment of theaforementioned themes, she is at her very best in dealing with thewrenching illness of Tamara's mother and the protagonist's discoveryof her own body and growing awareness of herself as a sexual being.The descriptions of Tamara and her partner-in-discovery, Rusty, arealone worth the reading of the novel. Ms. Willis poses many seriousquestions: What is the best way for a family to handle medicaltragedy? What responsibility to parents have in guiding theirchildren? How do children accept the loss of a parent? What is themeaning of "home" in the life of a family? What is thenature of belief?

It is my hope to meet the author some day and topersonally thank her for this work. Sarah Willis will emerge as oneof our nation's most eloquent and wise interpreters; I anxiously awaither next novel.