The Weight of Silence

The Weight of Silence, by Heather Gudenkauf

In this quiet, easy read, seven-year-old Calli Clark is best friends with Petra Gregory. Although Calli does not speak, Petra speaks on her behalf. Calli's father is a mean drunk, and her mother tries to pretend that everything is normal.

When Calli and Petra disappear early one morning, Calli's mother Antonia is forced to face what she has been trying to ignore.

Gudenkauf portrays a family damaged by alcoholism and abuse, with two sensitive children who have been deeply scarred by the disease.

Backseat Saints: Haunting story of a battered woman on the run

Backseat Saints, by Joshlyn Jackson
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Rose Mae Lolly, born in the depths of Alabama, was raised by her abusive alcoholic dad after her mom ran off when she was 8. She experiences men's love through emotional manipulation and shocking physical abuse. After she escapes her hometown, she migrates west and meets another abusive man to marry (Thom Grandee).

Settled in Amarillo, Texas, she's trapped by her husband's domineering family and her helplessness, in addition to the only kind of love she's ever known. All that changes when she meets a fortune teller in the airport. According to her tarot cards, either Thom Grandee has to die, or she will.

So begins her journey--shall she kill her husband before he kills her? She ends up on the run, trying to make a new life for herself and following the clues her mother has left for her and listening to her backseat saints. She spends a lot of time thinking about her high school romance, and in her rose-colored memory, he was the only man who's ever treated her well.

Rose Mae Lolly was a minor character in Jackson's gods in Alabama (which I haven't yet read). This novel gave me a perspective of what goes through the mind of a woman who has only known violent love. In her own way, Rose loves Thom Grandee. (She gets sexually turned on by him, as well.) She finds it very difficult to leave him, much less to kill him, even though he almost kills her first. It was not an easy book to read, but I would recommend it.

Out: Japanese feminist noir?

Out by Natsuo Kirino

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

How to start. Another book that I felt compelled to finish so I could read something more inspiring and uplifting, like Obama's Dreams from My Father or a novel in which I could actually relate to the characters.

This book is billed as Japanese feminist noir, and is highly disturbing and dark, to the point of when my 5-year-old and 12-year-old sons asked me what the story was about, I wouldn't tell them. (I told my 12-year-old later when the 5-year-old was out of earshot.)

I was going to give the book three stars until I got to the ending. Kirino deftly depicts the seedy underworld of Japan, and the difficulties of Japanese life...the gender politics, the sexism and ageism (reading the book, I was reminded of how OLD I am now as a 44-year-old woman in Japanese society!), and the inequality and indignities faced daily by the working class and foreigners in such a modern, privileged society.

Four Japanese women work nights in a bento factory, and one of them ends up killing the husband who was abusing her. The rest of the women help her dispose the body by dismembering it. Yakuza (Japanese mafia), loan sharks, and other sordid characters become involved. Money changes hands. The women, who begin the book as extremely desperate characters, become more so.

I realize why some people call this book feminist...Kirino skewers the terrible inequities between Japanese women and men. I was drawn into the book until the ending--at which point I became very disappointed and decided not to read any more of Kirino's books...I just cannot relate to sadomasochism, and I find it very, very difficult to understand how it can be called feminist. Masako was an interesting character until the end, at which point I just could not even begin to fathom her choices or her passions.

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