SING THEM HOME
Stephanie Kallos
Atlantic Monthly Press
Fiction
ISBN: 9780871139634
Stephanie Kallos first garnered critical attention and popular acclaim for her debut novel, BROKEN FOR YOU, published in 2004. In SING THEM HOME, her second work of fiction, she returns to her themes of family conflict, long-held secrets and the changes wrought by death, while broadening her scope to explore these themes in the context of a truly unique fictional town, Emlyn Springs, Nebraska.
Emlyn Springs, located in southeast Nebraska near Lincoln, is a town where the dead seem very near, even to the living. The empty businesses along Main Street remind the town's dwindling population of its former prosperity, of shop owners and merchants now gone. Emlyn Springs keeps their dead close by honoring them in an unusual way, inspired by the town's overwhelmingly Welsh heritage. In a week of silence and song, they usher the newly dead into their new way of being, which (unbeknownst to the living) is far more observant and active than one might expect.
Given the town's dedicated method of honoring the dead, it's not surprising that those who have gone before are on people's minds. With no one is that more true than Hope Jones, the wife of the town's physician (don't call him a doctor --- the language is imprecise). Hope, the mother of three children, was carried off by a tornado in the late 1970s. Her body was never found, and her disappearance has created a troublesome rift in the lives of her three children, now grown by the time of the novel's opening, brought back together in Emlyn Springs by the sudden death of their father.
Oldest sibling Larken now lives in Lincoln, where she's on the art history faculty of the University of Nebraska. Shortly after her mother's death, teenaged Larken overcame her grief and confusion by sleeping with anyone who would have her. Since then, she has found solace in food, but no matter how much she eats, she is still empty inside. Middle sibling Gaelan also lives in Lincoln, where he's the celebrity weatherman (not meteorologist) on a local television news station. Gaelan fills his days with bodybuilding and his nights with a series of meaningless one-night stands with beautiful women. But none of them can hold a candle to the love of his life, his high school sweetheart from Emlyn Springs.
Youngest sibling Bonnie gained infamy in the same tornado that carried off her mother, gaining the nickname "Flying Girl" because she was carried up on her bicycle and deposited gently in the branches of a precariously placed tree. Since then, Bonnie has become increasingly eccentric, performing a series of odd jobs and cruising the back roads around Emlyn Springs looking for "artifacts," some of which seem to point back to her long-gone mother.
Just as she remains a fixture in her children's lives (and in the life of Viney, her best friend and her husband's long-time mistress), Hope also plays a starring role in the novel, as passages from her diary as a young wife and mother are interspersed with chapters that take place 25 years after her death. As Hope's three children, brought together again by the passing of their father, experience radical transformations in their lives, the reader also learns of the complicated, messy, secret history behind Hope's life --- and death --- in Emlyn Springs.
SING THEM HOME is a sensitive, deeply perceptive portrayal of a family in transition. Kallos has a keenly observant eye, which she uses to comment obliquely on academia, celebrity culture and small-town politics. She also seems to have a genuine affection for and understanding of small towns like Emlyn Springs; although she acknowledges their shortcomings, she also values their traditions. Kallos serves as a wry but knowledgeable tour guide to the world she has created. By the last page, readers will feel like they've become not only honorary members of the Jones family but also vital members of the Emlyn Springs community.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.
© Copyright 1996-2009, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
