Book Review: Sweetwater by Christina Baker Kline

Sweetwater is Christina Baker Kline’s debut novel. The story is about Cassandra (Cassie), a clay artist from New York, who was raised by her father, after her mother had been killed in an accident when she was just three. They had been estranged from her mother’s family since the accident and she was surprised to discover that her maternal grandfather, upon his death, had bequeathed her a house and acres of farmland in Tennessee. At this point, Cassie who was feeling a little disillusioned with her life in NY, has a watershed moment and decides to move lock, stock and barrel to Tennessee, much to the surprise of her father and her friends. But, she is resolute for she sees this as an opportunity to unravel the past and redefine her future.

The story is told in alternate chapters by Cassie and her unhappy grandmother Clyde. I found this style of storytelling with alternate perspectives, quite charming, albeit a little confusing in the beginning. The story starts off well. Christina’s narrative style is interesting and prose lucid.
Cassie finds that most of her mother’s relatives in Tennessee are confused and a bit suspicious about her sudden move from a “happening place” like New York to a dead town in Tennessee, a place youngsters want to flee from. None of them seems too thrilled to have her there and her grandmother, especially seems quite reticent about Cassie’s moving to her old house where she lived before.

Cassie soon finds that her mother’s accident was shrouded in mystery and was somehow related to the death of one of Clyde’s good friends. The more the family discourages Cassie from investigating this relationship and opening old wounds, the more determined and driven she gets about solving the mystery. However, for the reader, after all the hype, the mystery turns out to be quite a let-down, for there was not much of a mystery at all.

This being Christina’s first book, the writing was a bit immature. When one eats a mango that is not fully ripe, one finds some parts sweet and some sour and it gets even sourer towards the end. So also was this book, where I found the writing style to be inconsistent and the end especially left much to be desired. There were so many questions still unanswered after one finished the book. What happens to her friends Adam and Drew? Why was the gay cousin Ralph introduced in the book? In the end, does Cassie leave Tennessee for good to move in with her cousin Troy? Does she share her discoveries and her new relationships with her father?

Was the whole purpose of the incest relationship with her cousin, just to have him help her find the mysterious box? The one she believed held the key to the whole mystery. Did the author make him an “adopted” cousin, in an attempt to legitimize her relationship with him?

Somewhere in the middle of the book, the author randomly shows Cassie to have a lesbian character, which was not explained later in the book. It almost seemed like that was left in the book in error.

I also felt that I did not learn much from the book. She did not even make an effort to bring out the essence of the southern living or their flowery language or the famous southern hospitality.

All in all, I felt Christina Baker Kline has potential to be a good writer. But, she needs to focus on consistency in her writing and on how to tie the whole story together and bring it to a graceful end. Her latest book, The Orphan train, which was written twenty year later, was much better and made it to the NY bestsellers’ list. However, even in that book, the writing style in the end was starkly different from the rest of the book and she finished the story in too much of a hurry, though there was much scope to end it in a sensitive manner.

I am looking forward to finding Christina Baker Kline blossom into a consummate author in the coming years.

Book Review - ORPHAN TRAIN by Christina Baker Kline (2012)

When I saw the title of the book “Orphan Train”, I was not sure what the title referred to. As I read this book, it opened my eyes to a piece of American history; to a practice prevalent between 1854 and the Great Depression. During this period, tens of thousands of homeless children were transported by train out of northern cities to the rural west by the Children’s Aid Society, which hoped to give abandoned homeless children a fresh start. The truth is that only a few of these children were adopted by kind families; many ended up with families which needed a slave rather than a child and used these children as indentured laborers.

This book explores how the life of of a ninety one year old Vivian, an orphan-train-survivor gets intertwined with seventeen year old Molly, a foster home hopper. Molly, defiant and audacious, Vivian mild mannered and mature beyond her years. What they had in common was their native intelligence and a yearning to learn. The author weaves her story between the past and present, connecting the two and creating a tapestry where the old and new merge into common motifs. It is a story of oppression, upheaval. It is a story of tenacity, hope, and of  the power of old friendships.

There is a shift in the protagonist of the book after the first few chapters. Initially, one believes that it is a current day story of young Molly getting buffeted from one foster home to another. But, the main story is about Vivian, who was orphaned at the age of 9, soon after her family immigrated to New York from their native Ireland. Vivian’s story and character have been developed by the author much more than Molly’s. I read the chapters of Vivian’s history with much more interest than Molly’s current day story.

The whole story unfolds as Molly comes to Vivian’s home to do her required community service. Her task, purportedly, is to organize and clean Vivian’s attic. But, slowly, she discovers that her main task is to enable Vivian look through all her memorabilia, go down memory lane,  and pay homage to the first 23 years of her life. Vivian believes that those were the years that truly shaped her. That was a time of hardship and great struggle and yet she feels that those were the most significant and her happy years thereafter were irrelevant to her life.

While Molly is working with Vivian, her course study of Wabanaki Indians, and in particular, her assignment to interview someone about their portage, prompted Molly to ask Vivian direct questions about her past. (Portage refers to possessions one would carry from place to place, if there is a dire limitation on what one can carry.) This is how the entire story of Vivian’s life gets unwrapped.

Through the story, we learn that through the years, the one thing that both these women have carried with them as they moved from one home to another, are talisman keepsakes from their family members, signifying their great importance to family ties and their yearning for a family life, a life of belonging. And nothing encumbered them in their movement, more than fear, which was the most difficult burden to surrender.

Telling the story of her life, which she has thus far been hidden in the depths of her heart, opens up Vivian’s mind. It has a cathartic effect and helps her transcend from shame, to acceptance to coming to terms. It gives her courage to break the status quo in her life, and inspires her take steps to atone for her own grave mistake and guilt.

One could feel Vivian traverse the emotional stages of the famous Kübler-Ross model of grief cycle; from denial and isolation, to anger, to bargaining, to depression, to acceptance. Acceptance here does not mean she was fine with her mistake, but she accepts the current reality and makes the best of her situation, recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality.

I felt that the author almost lost interest in the last few chapters of the book, after Vivian finishes telling the story of her youth. It almost echoes Vivian's own sentiment that her story after 23 years was irrelevant! Things happen too quickly and somewhat randomly, without a good story line to support them. There was a lot of scope to tell the last piece of the story in a tender, and sensitive way. For I am sure, there was a deep feeling of sadness on both sides ever since the mistake was committed by Vivian. Especially, since she had first-hand experience of how orphans are treated. But, the story was told in such a hurried and casual manner, that it leaves the reader wondering what happened.

Overall though, the book is quite good. I would give it 3.5 stars out of 5.