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Summary: wise, compassionate and evocative "Eden" celebrates hope
Review: What does it mean to make wise choices in life? How is it possible for a sensitive teen-ager to comprehend the significance of a mother's love when its source is no longer present? How much should one risk for dreams, desires and hopes? What is it about wanting that makes it so consuming, so overpowering? Anne LeClaire's sensitive, lyrical and evocative coming-of-age novel, "Leaving Eden," provides stunning, instructive answers. Her protagonist, sixteen year-old Tallie Brock does not consider her hometown of suggestively-named Eden, Virginia to be paradise; nor does she realize that the knowledge she so earnestly seeks about life could compel her to an act of self-banishment. What Talie does know is heartbreak and abandonment. Not once, but twice, does her mother leave her. Blessed with Natalie Wood-like looks, Dinah Mae Brock wrestles with her own need to live out her dreams. After Dinah Mae abruptly leaves her diligent, devoted husband Luddy for the hopes of realizing her life-long ambition of becoming a Hollywood stgar, her bright, inquisitive but disaffected daughter must confront her own demons and ask herself questions she is not initially prepared to confront. Without the comfort and security of her mother, Tallie lacks "context" for her life and yearns to see the "whole picture" instead of the "jangly bits and pieces that didn't seem to fit." Insecure with her own physical appearance, a social outsider whose anxieties are exacerbated by an intolerably smug and critical maternal grandmother, Tallie has yet to discover that "things don't always have to be laid out straight as string to make sense." Trying to make sense of his own loneliness, Luddy takes to drink to obliterate pain. One parent dead, the other remote and silent, Tallie seeks answers through involvement in the Klip-N-Kurl beauty salon, where the town's women congregate to share gossip, secrets, and occasional comfort. Just as quickly as she had left Eden, Dinah Mae returns, but with even more unanswered questions. The novel pivots around the issue of unresolved dreams and wants. Both mother and daughter must face how to fulfill the lives they have been given while being true to themselves and the one they love. In desperation, Tallie turns to the town's pariah "witch," whose Queen of Cures causes more consternation to Tallie than comfort. Tallie muses, "It's hard to figure out what will kill you and what will cure you" and even more difficuilt to figure out the difference, she unknowingly sets an outline for her own life. The second abandonment is even more wrenching, more final as Tallie must observe her mother's unsuccessful battle with cancer. LeClaire is nothing less than brilliant in her exploration of an adolescent's existential anguish and resounding pain at the loss of a beloved parent. Tallie yearns to have her mother tell her "everything" she needs to know about life. As she rails at the unfairness of her mother's death, Tallie also castigates herself for her own inability to ask the right questions, provide enough solace and deflect physical pain. As Tallie discovers "wanting is a powerful thing," she embarks on a bumpy road of self-discovery in which her sexuality, capacity for truth and ability to deceive combine to compel her to an act of self-defintion and discovery. She learns that dreams, "the conceiving of possibilities that stretch" beyond the single person, necessarily must animate life; the act of want transcends its attainment. Tallie ultimately will come to grips with one of life's greatest dilemmas, a choice between regret and remorse. Interspersed in this fast-paced narrative are bite-sized morsels of Tallie's wisdom, written in her private journal. Each aphorism derives from experience and love, from the intricate web of friendships Tallie has created in Eden and from the solitude of suffering and desire in her own heart. Anne LeClaire has created a genuinely moving description of wisdom's costs and love's possibilities. "Leaving Eden" will leave readers profoundly moved.
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