|
|
Auctions and zShops sellers and our other stores recommend:
Reviews
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist , September 1, 1996
The title of Wolverton's first novel refers to the tiny specks of light glittering around the dark disc of the moon during a solar eclipse. These are called Bailey's beads, after the astronomer who first observed them, and constitute the last brightness visible before the sun disappears--an image that suggests the tone of this wrenching story. After writer Brenda ("Bryn" ) Redding suffers a coma and brain damage due to an auto accident, her mother, Vera, and lover, Djuna, sit by her, awkwardly sharing the fragments of the unconscious woman's life. Some two months of internal monologues, third-person observations, and insights from Bryn's ex-lover, Lowell, mingle with some of Bryn's poetry and the 21 chapters of her unfinished novel to form an arresting picture of a complex woman whose shattered life has, in turn, shattered the lives of those around her and who may never again be whole, despite recovering consciousness and beginning physical, occupational, and speech therapy. Whitney Scott
Copyright© 1996, American Library Association. All rights reserved From Kirkus Reviews , July 1, 1996
Poet Wolverton (ed., Hers: Brilliant New Fiction by Lesbian Writers, 1995) wears many hats--her ambitious debut as a novelist features several poems that could stand alone, a story-within-the- story that gives some needed distance from her characters (to tell what would otherwise be a now-trite incest tale), and a stark but melodious prose style. Professional photographer Djuna Rifkin doesn't know whether she'll be able to cope when her lover, writer Bryn Redding, goes into a coma following a... read more Synopsis
As Bryn Redding lies in a coma following a car accident, her mother and her lover come together to care for her. Amidst the uncertainty and confusion over Bryn's chances for recovery, fragments of her life are revealed to the reader through the stories and memories of her mother Vera and the very different perceptions of her lover, Djuna Rifkin. read more Synopsis
Nominated for a 1993 Lambda Literary Award for her collection of poetry, Black Slip, the author traces the conflicts between the mother of the victim of a car accident who lies in a coma and her daughter's lesbian lover. read more
Customer Reviews
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other readers!
Totally awesome and it deserve more than 5 stars !
|
Reviewer:
A reader
from Melbourne, Australia
July 10, 1998
|
The best book I've ever read and believe me, I've read many. I can't help but am immensely impressed by the unusual writing style employed by the writer, Terry Wolverton. In fact, once you started reading the book, there's no turning back. The book is extremely well written with the emotions of each and every characters that follow after Bryn's (also known as Brenda) car accident, carefully and beautifully displayed. There are other characters like Bryn's mother, Vera, her lover, Djuna and her students and friends revolving around in the story. The most amazing thing about the story, which is not just like any of those involving a lover's and many loved ones' exaggerated display of emotional feelings and memories that always seem to follow after an accident and with a very predictable ending, is the way how the writer makes it a point to suck the readers' mind and soul into it. As you read page by page, you actually feel that at one moment, you're Bryn, and the next moment, you're either the hilarious but faithful friend, Emily or the distraught mother, and worst of all, the dishearten girlfriend, whom had been mercilessly 'erased' from Bryn's memory after she regained her consciousness... You feel the pain, the struggling of each characters' emotions of having been brought together once again because of the accident and makes you realised how in real life, we have missed so many chances of treasuring our loved ones until we start to lose them, or the chances of finally being able to realise how we have mistreated or have taken advantages of some people, how we can actually know a person more deeply if given the right chance to try...it can be between a mother and a daughter as in this case, or just anybody, like you and I, in many of our lives' circumstances and how we wished if it have been the other way, things might have been much better... After reading the book, I suddenly have this huge urge to cry over these missed chances and to start reading Anderson's fairy tale, 'The Snow Queen'. I did.
|
|
1
person
found this review helpful.
|
|
Wonderful exploration of how we strive to know one another.
|
Reviewer:
A reader
November 2, 1996
|
This book is fascinating exercise for the mind, as Terry Wolverton artfully explores the ways we build the stories of our lives and of those we love. The author invites us to construct our own view of her central character, Bryn, based on the tales and memories of those who gather around her in a crisis and, perhaps most remarkably, through Bryn's own novel. Wolverton raises stimulating questions that will stick with you after you finish reading, like the memory of a particularly engaging and satisfying conversation. Fans of Jeanette Winterson will likely be thrilled with Bailey's Beads!
|
|
1
person
found this review helpful.
|
|
Customers who bought titles by Terry Wolverton also bought titles by these authors:
Look for similar books by subject:
Browse other Literature & Fiction titles.
|
