The Leaving by Gabriella West

Book:  The Leaving

Author:  Gabriella West

Publisher:  Self-Published at Smashwords

As an intelligent, slightly quirky, baby dyke with a cowlick, coming of age in small town, rural America in the mid-eighties was a confusing, awkward, lonely experience.  I didn’t read the same books, listen to the same music, or wear the same clothes as my peers; and whenever I tried to engage anyone in conversation, they tended to look at me like I was asking them, in a little-used dialect of isiXhosa, to conjegate a sentence with multiple verbs.

And, as hard as it may be to believe, I never actually did that – with “that” being the operative word.

Because friendships of any depth were fleeting, at best, I tended to focus my teenage energies inward, and spent a lot of time thinking about travelling to places like Marrakesh and the Heart of Darkness, and meeting people just a little more like me.

Or even totally not like me, but at least able to conjugate a sentence with multiple verbs.

In The Leaving, by Gabriella West, we are introduced to teenager Cathy Quinn, a smart, quirky, social misfit growing up in the dreary and depressed 1980’s Dublin.  Her gay brother, Stevie, begins a new relationship with the one boy she thinks she likes only to discover she really doesn’t.  Stevie is sometimes her friend and sometimes her antagonist, but always her older brother.  Cathy understands that she’s not like anyone else, but isn’t going to be coerced by her parents, her brother, or her schoolmates into fitting in to their definition of ‘normal’. 

After Christmas break, she meets Jeanette, another misfit, and begins her first in-depth friendship.  Quickly, the friendship grows stronger and deeper, and Cathy soon realizes she’s fallen in love. But, being gay is strictly verboten in this society, and Jeanette is more concerned with starting to fit in with the kids at school than in exploring and pursuing her feelings for her best friend.  Cathy is faced with changing herself to fit in with Jeanette, or staying true to herself and being alone again.  She chooses to focus inward to cope with the separation, loss, and pain; and looks outward as she starts to plan her escape from school, home, Dublin, and Ireland.

“California, here we come . . .”

When I first read the synopsis of The Leaving, I thought I’d be reading a YA novel.  And, while some young adults might pick it up and learn a thing or two, the book transcends the boundaries of that genre’.  Yes, it’s about a teenager dealing with school, friends, family, sexuality, and first love; but it also explores complex themes like sibling rivalry, gender bias, social bullying, and raw emotional default.   

Cathy is described as chubby, homely, standoffish, and weird, but you get the sense that at some level she understands that she’s biding her time, keeping the plates spinning, and waiting for the time to spread her wings and fly.  This is portrayed beautifully during the section of the book where Cathy and Jeanette spend several weeks on the farm in County Meath.  Cathy flourishes socially, emotionally, and physically before it all falls apart and the downward spiral of her relationship with Jeanette begins.  But still, she has the brief, sweet taste of things to come.

While Cathy’s relationship with her parents is almost non-existent, her relationship with Stevie is complicated and central to the book – he’s everything she isn’t – strong, popular, bold, and good-looking.  He looks after her, tells her things, and shares part of the burden of home life with her.  But, he senses her inner strength and capabilities lurking deep inside. Surprisingly, and sometimes not, it appears that Stevie senses her gifts, and tries to sabotage her through passive and not-so-passive aggressive behavior.  As the book progresses, however, we start to see a shift in each of them and their relationship – Cathy, for all her faults and insecurities, begins to come into herself, and makes decisions that change the course of her life and moves her beyond Stevie’s shadow.

Overall, I thought the book started out very slowly, but came to understand that this is Cathy’s journey, not that of the reader.  The book is written in first person narrative, and we follow her pace, her thoughts, her decisions, and her directions.  She treats herself not so differently than she treats everyone around her, and the reader often times feels so close to breaking through, only to be pushed back slightly.  At times, we’re invited inside, much like Stevie and Jeanette, but not much more.  I sense that this takes an amazing amount of discipline by the author to tell Cathy’s story without stepping outside her carefully guarded emotional façade.  While it can be trying for the reader, it makes perfect sense.

One of the near constants of any coming of age story is that there is something that each of us identifies with, and this story stays true to form.  The Leaving is a powerful book, but it’s not emotionally easy to read.  We want to be closer to Cathy, but she won’t let us.  We want her to meet the perfect woman, but we don’t know if she ever will.  And, we want to her be happy, but there’s no guarantee where life will lead her. 

If you’re looking for something with a little bite, something that will challenge you, something that will take you back to those not-always-so-halcyon days of your teens as you assess where you’ve come and how you got here; then The Leaving is the perfect catalyst.  I’m giving this book a 4.8 out of 6 on the Rainbow Scale.

Gabriella West isn’t afraid to be different, and she isn’t afraid to stay true to herself - for a little more info on her and how the book came to be, don't hesitate to check her out at either of the following sites: 

http://gabriellawest.net/

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/gabriellawest 

The River Within by Baxter Clare Trautman

Book:  The River Within

Author:  Baxter Clare Trautman

Publisher:  Baxter Clare Trautman at Smashwords

Books have the capacity to be amazing creatures, sapient beings, really.  It’s a quiet, unassuming presence that transcends the simple form of setting, theme, character, plot, conflict, and point of view.  It’s much like a subtle, veiled prophet that transforms the words, sentences, paragraphs, and even whole chapters into something more essential.  Books can speak loudly of things like “truth”, “frailty”, “loss”, and “resurrection”, even without a voice.

Books can be that.  Books can do that.  A lot of books, though, never utter more than a few words or stilted phrases. Thirty-six hours after reading the last sentence, The River Within is still whispering furiously in my ear, bullying my other thoughts, and trying to squeeze the last bit of breath out of my emotional control.

And I wish it would stop, maybe bake some cookies or do a load of laundry, because it is seriously making me want to start chain smoking Twizzlers.

Foreign Correspondent Greer Madison has spent thirty years doing what few men could ever do, but life in a never-ending war zone has started to lose its luster. While trying to prove that she’s still relevant, still capable, still in the game, she takes a young reporter on what will become a deadly trip into Iraq.

Returning back to the States to recover at the home of her best friends, Doug and Darlene Richardson, she finds that home isn’t quite what she remembered.  Darlene, a war advocate, is struggling with the oppressive guilt that her political beliefs led to her son’s enlistment into the Navy, and his ultimate death in country.  Distraught by his tragic, senseless end, she erects a series of impenetrable walls around herself and his memory.  Spiraling downward, she keeps the details of her son’s death from her husband and her daughter, and carefully plans a tragic quid pro quo to atone for her sins.  Doug, secretly blaming his wife, as well, turns to the bottle and another woman for the solace he can no longer find at home.

Kate, Doug and Darlene’s headstrong daughter, mourns for the loss of her family, and aches to find someone who understands her need to talk about her brother. She has a wonderful fiancé that is handsome, sweet, and beloved by her mother.  But, deep down, she knows she doesn’t really love him, at least not now, maybe in the future.   

Darlene is living a lie. Locking herself into Chris’ room to read and reread his letters from Iraq, she retreats further into self-loathing and desperation. Kate and Greer, meanwhile begin to form a relationship, open up about their mistakes, their failures, and ultimately their darkest secrets.  Darlene mistakes their intimacy for what it could be, and the resulting explosion rips through every barrier erected to keep them each safe.  The thing is, without the barriers, they find there is strength, forgiveness, and healing in their numbers.

Baxter Clare Trautman’s The River Within is a fine piece of contemporary literature.  There’s no mystery or intrigue, there’s very little romance, and the only action involves drinking tea, flashbacks, and swimming naked in a pool.  While Greer is a lesbian that has had a few relationships with men, and Kate is temporarily confused, this book isn’t the least bit lesbian-themed.  And, while there is a bit of sex, it’s all straight sex.  This is all as it should be, because the book isn’t about any of those things.

To be perfectly honest, though, there are a few dollops of juicy tension, and references to a handful of naughtily little escapades - in these, hope springs eternal.

The River Within is a tough book to read.  That’s not to say it’s a bad book – au contraire, it’s really a well-done, original story that is complex and rich with strong, complicated characters.  Characters that you find yourself liking and rooting for, in spite of the lies, the deceptions, and the bad judgements.

However, it’s the kind of book where you read for a while, set it down, and arrange your composure.  Maybe walk the dogs around the block, surf the Internet for a bit, look in the refrigerator, fold a few socks, then pick it back up.  You do this every few chapters, because your chest is aching, and the pressure on your emotions is about to send you into vapor lock.  You don’t want to be hearing these private conversations, but you can’t stop yourself.  It won’t stop talking to you.  You can’t turn it off.  

The River Within is a book about the secrets we keep inside, and having the courage to look deep, deep down and say to our self, “I don’t like you very much”.  It’s about doing something harder than we’ve ever done, about stopping our own madness, and opening up to the honesty.  It’s about taking those first tentative steps to make things right with our self, and with those whom our lives affect. 

I strongly suspect that not everyone will experience the visceral impact I have, and that's fine - stories and characters impact everyone a little differently. 

The River Within, Baxter Clare Trautman’s first foray into e-book self-publishing, gets a strong 5.1 out of 6 on the Rainbow Scale. It’s a really good story that has left a big piece of me grieving for innocence lost, and because no matter how much we want it, we can never change the past; we can only alter our future.