So, yesterday was the official kick-off of the Keep Portland Weird festival here in Paris, which meant that I had a reading/screening in the...
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Turn of Mind is an impressive first novel by Alice LaPlante, one that is skillfully crafted to intrigue and evoke. Part drama, part mystery, Turn of Mind is a fractured narrative provided by the voice of its unreliable narrator, Dr. Jennifer White, a once brilliant mind now slowly deteriorating by the ravages of dementia and Alzheimer's Disease. What I found most enthralling about this very smart novel is the perspective from inside dementia and the advancing stages of Alzheimer's. Jennifer's narrative swerves and loops through her diminishing memories, conjuring up characters and events that are sometimes immediate and wrenching, sometimes distant and contradictory, but always thorny and complex.
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Andrea Nicolaides has commented on (2) products.
Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante
Andrea Nicolaides, January 1, 2012
Turn of Mind is an impressive first novel by Alice LaPlante, one that is skillfully crafted to intrigue and evoke. Part drama, part mystery, Turn of Mind is a fractured narrative provided by the voice of its unreliable narrator, Dr. Jennifer White, a once brilliant mind now slowly deteriorating by the ravages of dementia and Alzheimer's Disease. What I found most enthralling about this very smart novel is the perspective from inside dementia and the advancing stages of Alzheimer's. Jennifer's narrative swerves and loops through her diminishing memories, conjuring up characters and events that are sometimes immediate and wrenching, sometimes distant and contradictory, but always thorny and complex.The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall
Andrea Nicolaides, March 8, 2011
As a teenager in New Orleans during the very early 60's, I read Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With The Wind" every summer and was swept away by the romance. As a white teenager in a still segregated city, I really didn't know much about the Civil War except as a reason to sing "Dixie" and yell, "The South Shall Rise Again" at any opportunity. Once I began college, real history became a passion and my silly attachment to Mitchell's book weakened. Many years later I found Alice Randall's "The Wind Done Gone" and wept for my early teenage naiveté. It is both prequel and sequel to GWTW. Cynara, the heroine, is a truly unforgettable character, and her struggles as a child and as a woman are hard, as is the slavery she was born to. Randall's insertion of Cynara's story into the gaps left by GWTW allows her to make visible a subject suspiciously missing from Mitchell's novel--the offspring of sexual relations between Blacks and Whites.(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)