No Revenge So Complete

Rating:
Summary: A family torn apart
Review: In Sarah Foulger's debut novel, a family is torn apart by an affair and its consequences. The Quintals - father Stephen, mother Corinne, and daughters Jane and Helen - are thrown into crisis when Helen answers a pre-dawn telephone call for her father. Told in chapters alternating among all the characters (including Nadine, the high school student with whom Stephen had the affair), the novel follows the characters as they find their own paths to survival through spiritual counsel and support. The themes of forgiveness and redemption figure strongly, especially in the latter half, hence the title, taken from the Josh Billings quote "There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness."

While some parts of this novel are skillfully told (one of Nadine's passages is particularly memorable), the book suffers from an unfortunate blandness. Foulger offers no special insight into these lives and their crises, nor does she bring them to life with any vibrancy. Her best characterizations are of Jane and Nadine, and, not surprisingly, their actions are detailed in the strongest chapters. Still, even they can be wooden and their thoughts repetitive.

Those interested in dysfunctional families, the strength of the spirit, and Christian fiction might be drawn to this story of people who struggle to find peace in the wake of betrayal.

Rating:
Summary: A family torn apart
Review: In Sarah Foulger's debut novel, a family is torn apart by an affair and its consequences. The Quintals - father Stephen, mother Corinne, and daughters Jane and Helen - are thrown into crisis when Helen answers a pre-dawn telephone call for her father. Told in chapters alternating among all the characters (including Nadine, the high school student with whom Stephen had the affair), the novel follows the characters as they find their own paths to survival through spiritual counsel and support. The themes of forgiveness and redemption figure strongly, especially in the latter half, hence the title, taken from the Josh Billings quote "There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness."

While some parts of this novel are skillfully told (one of Nadine's passages is particularly memorable), the book suffers from an unfortunate blandness. Foulger offers no special insight into these lives and their crises, nor does she bring them to life with any vibrancy. Her best characterizations are of Jane and Nadine, and, not surprisingly, their actions are detailed in the strongest chapters. Still, even they can be wooden and their thoughts repetitive.

Those interested in dysfunctional families, the strength of the spirit, and Christian fiction might be drawn to this story of people who struggle to find peace in the wake of betrayal.

Rating:
Summary: Simplicity and all its complications
Review: Sarah Foulger is a name to remember, a writer of incredible sensitivity, a wholly human being who has the power to communicate the most basic aspects of the human spirit in poetic prose. NO REVENGE SO COMPLETE is her first novel (though she has written short stories) and in this touchingly contemporary story she manages to make a case for survival, no easy task with the world in such a chaotic state. This book is a beacon of comforting light, a story skillfully written that goes far beyond the chapters of her novel.

Foulger sets her characters and storyline with consummate ease, seducing us into an atmosphere of an apparently calm family in a quiet Long Island town. The family she creates - Stephen, a father whose ordered life seems a solid foundation for Corrine, his wife who blithely carries out her duties as mother while tending to patients as a Pediatric Nurse, and for his daughters Jane the attractive achiever and Helen the pudgy/gawky underdog - could be any family in anyplace in today's society, a sort of `Everyfamily', and therein lies the power of what Foulger follows in sensitively, thoroughly woven resolution. This microcosm of contemporary Americana crumbles when Stephen is discovered to not only have been adulterous but also has impregnated his lover - daughter Jane's highschool friend. The repercussions of this act dismantles the family, causes powerful changes in all concerned, and in general seems to have produced insurmountable complications of anger, fear, loathing, desertion, and pain. The remainder of the book slowly reveals how each member of this complicated cast finds strength and resolution through the act of forgiveness - both of others and of themselves.

What Foulger has done is quietly (and with remarkable skill) show us redemptive paths in dealing with our growingly chaotic lives, world, and universe. Other authors have attempted to describe introspection and spiritual nurturing, but the results are usually preachy or so saccharine that the story collapses into the maudlin. Few writers in this genre have the observation and communication skills Foulger retains throughout this book. Her description of the sea, a garden, the wonder in children's hearts, and her development of wholly three-dimensional characters as disparate as any novel's cast is unique in its simplicity. Nothing is pushed, not even the dangerous entry of `a word from the wise clerics' which act as effective pivot points in her story. This is a fine novel, an engrossing story, and a resource for regaining our sense of faith in mankind so needed at this time. One hopes the public appeal is wide for this fine book.

Rating:
Summary: Simplicity and all its complications
Review: Sarah Foulger is a name to remember, a writer of incredible sensitivity, a wholly human being who has the power to communicate the most basic aspects of the human spirit in poetic prose. NO REVENGE SO COMPLETE is her first novel (though she has written short stories) and in this touchingly contemporary story she manages to make a case for survival, no easy task with the world in such a chaotic state. This book is a beacon of comforting light, a story skillfully written that goes far beyond the chapters of her novel.

Foulger sets her characters and storyline with consummate ease, seducing us into an atmosphere of an apparently calm family in a quiet Long Island town. The family she creates - Stephen, a father whose ordered life seems a solid foundation for Corrine, his wife who blithely carries out her duties as mother while tending to patients as a Pediatric Nurse, and for his daughters Jane the attractive achiever and Helen the pudgy/gawky underdog - could be any family in anyplace in today's society, a sort of 'Everyfamily', and therein lies the power of what Foulger follows in sensitively, thoroughly woven resolution. This microcosm of contemporary Americana crumbles when Stephen is discovered to not only have been adulterous but also has impregnated his lover - daughter Jane's highschool friend. The repercussions of this act dismantles the family, causes powerful changes in all concerned, and in general seems to have produced insurmountable complications of anger, fear, loathing, desertion, and pain. The remainder of the book slowly reveals how each member of this complicated cast finds strength and resolution through the act of forgiveness - both of others and of themselves.

What Foulger has done is quietly (and with remarkable skill) show us redemptive paths in dealing with our growingly chaotic lives, world, and universe. Other authors have attempted to describe introspection and spiritual nurturing, but the results are usually preachy or so saccharine that the story collapses into the maudlin. Few writers in this genre have the observation and communication skills Foulger retains throughout this book. Her description of the sea, a garden, the wonder in children's hearts, and her development of wholly three-dimensional characters as disparate as any novel's cast is unique in its simplicity. Nothing is pushed, not even the dangerous entry of 'a word from the wise clerics' which act as effective pivot points in her story. This is a fine novel, an engrossing story, and a resource for regaining our sense of faith in mankind so needed at this time. One hopes the public appeal is wide for this fine book.

Rating:
Summary: An empathic tale of human fallibility
Review: Sarah Foulger's wonderfully written debut novel, No Revenge So Complete, is a "reader engaging" drama of family life, filled with betrayal, disappointment, heartbreak, and the long and painful road to forgiveness. An empathic tale of human fallibility, No Revenge So Complete offers quiet introspection into the dysfunction that can lace unhappy relationships and malcontent lives. Also very highly recommended reading is Sarah Foulger's anthology of original short stories, Yards Of Purple.

Rating:
Summary: An empathic tale of human fallibility
Review: Sarah Foulger's wonderfully written debut novel, No Revenge So Complete, is a "reader engaging" drama of family life, filled with betrayal, disappointment, heartbreak, and the long and painful road to forgiveness. An empathic tale of human fallibility, No Revenge So Complete offers quiet introspection into the dysfunction that can lace unhappy relationships and malcontent lives. Also very highly recommended reading is Sarah Foulger's anthology of original short stories, Yards Of Purple.

Rating:
Summary: No misattribution so complete
Review: Self-centered perspectives, misunderstanding, misattribution, and lack of communication are the amplifiers through which small events change and sometimes destroy stable relationships. Relationships, once broken, may never be repaired. It is only through our willingness to take responsibility for our decisions, forgive others, and talk to the people who have injured us that we can repair them. None of these lessons is new. Most of live them at different points in our lives. Only rarely does a book illustrate these lessons in a way that helps us look inside our own lives and come away better for the experience.

Sarah Foulger's rich and engaging first novel is such a book. It opens with a rare and powerful depiction of the butterfly effect in action: a single ill-timed phone call picked up by the wrong person has serious repercussions for at least three families whose lives and relationships are changed forever. The events described are all too common, and the sequences of self-absorption, misattributions, and missed opportunities that follow are all too likely. In the days it takes for things to spin out of control completely, we have experienced this unfolding human disaster from five very different perspectives. Each character is very human (e.g. imperfect). Each is trying hard to be a good person, but each, in their own way, is self-centered. Each pushes blame and responsibility away from themselves and onto others in ways that prevent any of them from correctly perceiving what the others are thinking or feeling. Each of the five perspectives is entirely reasonable given the experiences and motivations of the individual characters, but taken together their very different assumptions, attributions, decisions, weaknesses, and failures to communicate amplify a situtation that might have been easily resolved into one that changes a dozen or more lives.

One of the strengths of this book is that it resists a happy ending. We watch in slow motion as relationships and lives are inalterable changed. As things reach bottom we see the beginning of what, in many books, would be a resolution. This book insistently hits fast forward and skips to the long term repercussions. The narrative here lacks the depth and detail of the early novel such that one is left wishing the author had retained the richly divergent perspective of the early book to the end. It remains, however, that there have been far reaching effects of a single small event. As the characters that remain to the end of the book struggle to recover from their own decisions, it becomes very clear just how important our communication, our willingness to forgive, and our ability to take a risk is to rebuilding shattered lives and relationships. This is a book which, in its depiction of imperfect people making imperfect decisions based on imperfect and often divergent perspectives, challenges us to think about our own perspectives and attributions. Nothing that happens in this book is inevitable, but everything is reasonable. As a result, it provokes discussion, introspection, and perhaps even a bit of personal therapy.

Rating:
Summary: No misattribution so complete
Review: Self-centered perspectives, misunderstanding, misattribution, and lack of communication are the amplifiers through which small events change and sometimes destroy stable relationships. Relationships, once broken, may never be repaired. It is only through our willingness to take responsibility for our decisions, forgive others, and talk to the people who have injured us that we can repair them. None of these lessons is new. Most of live them at different points in our lives. Only rarely does a book illustrate these lessons in a way that helps us look inside our own lives and come away better for the experience.

Sarah Foulger's rich and engaging first novel is such a book. It opens with a rare and powerful depiction of the butterfly effect in action: a single ill-timed phone call picked up by the wrong person has serious repercussions for at least three families whose lives and relationships are changed forever. The events described are all too common, and the sequences of self-absorption, misattributions, and missed opportunities that follow are all too likely. In the days it takes for things to spin out of control completely, we have experienced this unfolding human disaster from five very different perspectives. Each character is very human (e.g. imperfect). Each is trying hard to be a good person, but each, in their own way, is self-centered. Each pushes blame and responsibility away from themselves and onto others in ways that prevent any of them from correctly perceiving what the others are thinking or feeling. Each of the five perspectives is entirely reasonable given the experiences and motivations of the individual characters, but taken together their very different assumptions, attributions, decisions, weaknesses, and failures to communicate amplify a situtation that might have been easily resolved into one that changes a dozen or more lives.

One of the strengths of this book is that it resists a happy ending. We watch in slow motion as relationships and lives are inalterable changed. As things reach bottom we see the beginning of what, in many books, would be a resolution. This book insistently hits fast forward and skips to the long term repercussions. The narrative here lacks the depth and detail of the early novel such that one is left wishing the author had retained the richly divergent perspective of the early book to the end. It remains, however, that there have been far reaching effects of a single small event. As the characters that remain to the end of the book struggle to recover from their own decisions, it becomes very clear just how important our communication, our willingness to forgive, and our ability to take a risk is to rebuilding shattered lives and relationships. This is a book which, in its depiction of imperfect people making imperfect decisions based on imperfect and often divergent perspectives, challenges us to think about our own perspectives and attributions. Nothing that happens in this book is inevitable, but everything is reasonable. As a result, it provokes discussion, introspection, and perhaps even a bit of personal therapy.

Rating:
Summary: An eloquent reminder of the divinity of forgiveness
Review: The title of Sarah Foulger's novel "No Revenge So Complete" comes from a quotation from Josh Billings: "There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness." The quotation appears before the first chapter of the novel and initially struck me as giving too much away in terms of foreshadowing. Now I am of the mind that it is similar to a sermon in days of yore when a minister would announce a particular text from scripture and then speak on that theme. Besides, there is nothing inherently wrong with foreshadowing and whatever minor misgivings I might have about a quotation that appears before the first actual line of the novel are washed away by the author's choice of when and where to end the tale.

If there is indeed "no revenge as complete as forgiveness" then we begin reading Foulger's novel in anticipation of things that cannot, at least at face value, be easily forgiven. In fact we begin with a phone call to the Quintal house at 4:32 in the morning. Because of a house rule against telephones in the bedroom, it is Helen, the younger of two daughters, who is the only one to hear the phone and who goes to answer it. The jarring voice at the other end says, "This is Nadine and I need to speak to Steve right now, do you hear me?"

What strikes Helen as being odd is not that the phone is ringing at 4:32 in the morning, for Helen is too young to have a sense of the fear that such middle of the night phone calls provoke in adults, especially if they have children, but that the woman calls her father "Steve." Even her mother calls him Stephen and he is Mr. Quintal to everybody else. But when she wakes her father to take the call the look of unconditional panic in his eyes provokes her curiosity to a new level and when he goes down to take the call in the privacy of the den Helen continues to listen on the receiver upstairs and finds out what is going on. From that point on the lives of the Quintal family starts to come apart.

The first chapter of "No Revenge So Complete" takes place on the first Monday in May and is told from the perspective of Helen. Subsequent chapters are devoted to the each day of the week and the perspective of another character. The effect is not like "Rashomon," because while we do get each character's perspective on the events that are spiraling out of control, we are clearly not covering the same time frame. Foulger's first published work, "Yards of Purple," was a collection of short stories, so it is not surprising that each chapter has its own voice as well as its own perspective.

Telling you the characters who get their own chapters or the order in which they deal with the anguish of these events on their own would be giving away too much of the game. It would spoil the sense of anticipation as to where the story goes to next and in retrospect you can sense how different the story would be if you were to give each character a different day. The approach appeals to me because I like the idea of a novel that is something like a collection of short stories, linked together by events or people that chain out. Foulger's novel is certainly more linear, not going beyond the characters we learn about in that opening chapter, and provokes a certain thoughtfulness on the part of the reader. You cannot read about Helen in the first chapter and not wonder what she is thinking and doing in the chapters that follow, and the same holds true for the other characters.

The need for forgiveness is established in these chapters, but the ability to forgive does not come easily for most of these characters. There is one character who moves immediately to forgiveness, at least in one regards, because that is what they do and because they do not want to live their life any other way. But who needs to be forgiven and why is not always obvious to these characters and time is needed to provide a sense of perspective. That perspective usually comes with the ability to finally step outside of themselves and see the situation from the view of another.

Although all of these characters are disillusioned by the sin of betrayal, the common element is how they move, each in their own way, towards the idea of forgiveness. If the first act of the novel is how their lives come undone, then the second is how they struggle to put the pieces back together. Where Foulger shows a deft touch is where she decides to end her novel. I have no doubt that Hollywood, if they were inclined to make a film version of "No Revenge So Complete," would bulldoze through Fougler's ending and keep telling the story, but that would miss the point and when a book actually has a worthwhile point to be made then you should let it make it on its own terms.

The one warning I would sound is that some will find the subject matter of "No Revenge So Complete" a bit upsetting, depending on how close to home the situation hits. But then, clearly those would be readers who might benefit the most from reading this thoughtful first novel, which ultimately comes across not as a sermon, but as a parable.