"The Story She Left Behind" - inspired by the disappearance of a child prodigy and 1952's Great Smog скачать в хорошем качестве

"The Story She Left Behind" - inspired by the disappearance of a child prodigy and 1952's Great Smog

Hi! Welcome to Episode 113 of Pink’s Picks Book Recs: commentary from a retired HS English teacher. If you are one of my long-time listeners, you’ve likely noticed that if a work earns an “A,” I’m highly-likely to later read and review other works by that writer. That is the case with today’s author Patti Callahan Henry whose works: “Surviving Savannah,” “The Secret Book of Flora Lea,” and “Becoming Mrs. Lewis” from Episodes 83, 86, and 89 which all achieved my highest award. Unfortunately, I discovered some issues with Callahan’s most recent release, “The Story She Left Behind,” which affect my assessment, but back to that later, folks… On its back flap, another Pink’s Picks fave, William Kent Krueger, describes “Story” as a “magical mosaic of adventure, suspense, romance [and] mystery [with a] sprinkle of make-believe.” I agree. Callahan is a careful researcher and a talented storyteller and, per usual, with “Story,” she writes a compelling tale. “Story” begins with three narrative perspectives and ends with a fourth that serves as a denouement. Callahan begins with Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, a former child-prodigy who published a book at twelve years old. Her legend became as popular as her legacy when as an adult in 1927, she disappeared from her home in Bluffton, South Carolina leaving behind her beloved husband and daughter. Chapter 2 flashes forward twenty-five years to November 1952 and introduces Bronwyn’s now thirty-three-year-old daughter, Clara, an artist who has a child of her own. After a painful divorce left her penniless, Clara and Wynnie moved in with Clara’s dad in Bluffton, to the very property from where Bronwyn vanished. Chapter 3 also commences in November 1952, but in London. Charlie Jameson has been tasked with preserving and cataloguing his late father’s collection of maps, books, and papers. He’s doing that when he notices “a brown leather” (13) briefcase on a bottom bookcase. Curious, he picks it up and discovers “instructions inside [that the] contents are to be given only to Clara Harrington [and] she must retrieve the papers in person” (13). Charlie is dumbfounded as he’s never heard of this woman for whom an address and phone number in the United States is included. From there, the plot continues from both Clara’s and Charlie’s points-of-view as Clara and severely-asthmatic Wynnie cross the Atlantic “only to arrive during one of London’s most deadly natural disasters – The Great Smog” (front flap). This cataclysmic event forces them to find refuge with Charlie at his family’s lake estate. While there, both narrators attempt to unravel the dual mysteries of: Bronwyn’s long lost papers, and how Charlie’s dad acquired them. As in all of Callahan’s aforementioned novels, I learned from her words. Interestingly, “Story” was inspired by actual child-prodigy “Barbara Newhall Follett” who also disappeared as an adult, but in Boston “in 1939.” I’d read before about “the Great Smoke” and that London’s 1956 Clean Air Act was a result. I was unaware that later statistics cite it as the cause for up to “12,000” deaths. (Note from the Author) I love Callahan’s overarching themes regarding the power of shame, guilt, love, forgiveness and reconciliation. I do not like the license she takes with facts and figures that are not essential to the plot and could have been omitted entirely. For example, Clara thinks back to her teenaged years when she drew on the phone receiver with “Magic Markers” (36) and later when she and her bestie, Lilia, snuck into a horror movie, “The Snake Pit” (52). Clara would’ve been a teen in the 1930s; “The Snake Pit” debuted in 1948 and Magic Markers were invented in 1953. Lilia later wears “pantyhose” in 1952, but they weren’t invented until 1959. Also in 1952, Clara drives over “a bridge” (50) to Savannah that wasn’t built until 1953. She claims that Bluffton “once belonged to Native Americans” (316), but that term was not in use when “Story” is set. Further, she adds extraneous information that doesn’t add up. On page 100, Clara says, “It looks like it is ten at night outside, and it’s only four thirty,” attributing the darkness to the smog. Though that would’ve contributed to visibility, London in December in dark by that time regardless. On page 25, Clara explains that her parents met when her dad “was in medical school at Harvard while [her mom] worked for the Boston Herald,” yet in an interview on page 83, Clara’s dad says that he was at the Harvard library looking for a copy of “’Great Expectations’ for his literature class.” What medical student has time to take an English class? Possible, but improbable. Though in her end notes, Callahan writes, “she took liberty with dates and facts for the sake of the story,” to me, these exceptions don’t add to the plot. "The Story She Left Behind" is a good read, but it's a "B" read, not an "A."