HOW FAR IS THE OCEAN FROM HERE
Amy Shearn
Shaye Areheart Books
Fiction
ISBN: 9780307405340
On a recent road trip to southeastern New Mexico, derelict or run-down motels and cafes whizzed past the window, interrupting my view of the mesas and horizon. These buildings and businesses were mysteriously erected between small towns or just outside them with seemingly little to offer weary travelers. Yet, because I had just read Amy Shearn's excellent debut, HOW FAR IS THE OCEAN FROM HERE, they also held a strange promise of transformation and healing solitude.
Susannah Prue is a young woman in danger of disappearing. She feels unseen and unknown by even those closest to her. She makes the radical decision to become a surrogate mother in order to do something and feel something. But, just weeks before her due date, she disappears on purpose, jumping into her car and traveling southwest, heading to the ocean, and finally finding herself --- literally and later figuratively --- at the Thunder Lodge, an empty motel in the middle of the New Mexican desert.
Run by the gruff and long isolated Marlon and Char, the motel proves an uneasy refuge for Susannah, a place she means to be only a temporary home. Soon she falls into a routine, watching the highway and spending time with the couple's strange son Tim. Susannah is attracted by Tim's beauty and simplicity, and she willfully ignores his disability, causing Marlon, and especially Char, much distress. But Susannah is also distressed, and wounded, and must decide quickly what she wants to do. It is only a matter of time before Julian and Kit, the biological and legal parents of the baby she is carrying, find her hiding at the Thunder Lodge.
Julian and Kit are the successful couple who, from all appearances, have everything that Susannah does not. But their inability to conceive a child has led them to their uneasy relationship with Susannah. While Kit deals deep-seeded suspicions and jealousies, Julian finds himself attracted to Susannah, and they begin to spend time together secretly. As the baby grows inside Susannah it becomes harder to define the boundaries of their relationship, and Susannah finds it more difficult to emotionally come to terms with surrogacy. Often childlike and simple herself, the Thunder Lodge and the surrounding desert provide empty space and ample time for much-needed adult contemplation. It is interrupted only by her fascination with Tim and the arrival of an intriguing pair of travelers who also seem at a crossroads in life.
HOW FAR IS THE OCEAN FROM HERE is the story of longing --- for freedom, peace, love and belonging to something greater than oneself. The tone is at once conversational and completely literary. There is a timelessness, not quite old-fashioned, in the author's phrasing that makes the story lovely and surprising to read. The characters are quirky without being caricatures. They are not always likable, yet their stories, as individuals and as parts of the larger novel, are compelling.
Amy Shearn's first work of fiction is nothing short of marvelous; beautifully written with a well-crafted plot and an interesting set of characters, it is at once witty, hopeful and heartbreakingly sad. This tale of life and death, change and possibility, love, friendship and the search for one's true self is highly recommended. It has the stark and unusual beauty, brutal honesty and seductive rhythms of the southwestern landscape in which it is set.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.
© Copyright 1996-2010, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
