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Guests | May 6, 2013

Benjamin Percy: IMG The Roof People

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My sister slept with the light on until she was 27. She rightfully blames me. I would leap out of closets with my hands made into claws. I would... Continue »
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Salvage

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Salvage Cover

ISBN13: 9781596922839
ISBN10: 1596922834
Condition:
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Calling to mind The Lovely Bones, this original, electrifying debut explores the collision point of memory, family secrets, and forgiveness.

After witnessing a horrific accident, our unnamed thirty-seven-year-old narrator flees her hectic Manhattan life and buys a rambling, Victorian house in rural Virginia to recover in solitude. Yet in the uncomfortable quiet of her own company, she finds herself facing questions and obsessions from he Meanwhile, she watches her mother, Lois — an eccentric, flamboyant woman who begins dating a series of men all named after saints — grow increasingly unhinged, perhaps poised on the cusp of madness. And as a charming new neighbor slowly moves into her carefully guarded privacy, the narrator discovers the impossibility of hiding from r isolated childhood in 1970s suburbia and talking to the ghost of her dead sister Nancy. life's tangled, and often disturbing, realities.

Darkly funny, deeply imaginative, and fueled by unexpected, poetic prose, Salvage captures the challenge of finding a home that can withstand all that haunts us and the subtle and disastrous ways in which mothers and daughters lose and find one another, time and again.

Review:

"Kotapish offers in her unnerving debut a frustrating tale of a woman's struggle to keep her past from overtaking her present. The nameless narrator leads readers through the mazes of her memory, from a childhood spent talking to the ghost of her dead sister, Nancy, through her adult trauma of watching someone get run over by a subway car, and finally to Virginia, where she lives in a ramshackle house. Her cruel mother, Lois, whose sanity is also constantly called into question, becomes the axis on which the narrator's story spins in disjointed bits. The more the narrator reveals, the less reliable she becomes, calling into question whether Nancy is indeed the ghost of her dead sister or simply the personification of repressed grief and resentment. Within this aching knot of remembrance, Kotapish frequently lets her language and attention meander, stringing random thought together in unseemly pastiches that verbosely wind their way to dead ends. The novel has an overly indulgent feel, though some may appreciate the empowering ending." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"With a near stream-of-consciousness feel and a deliberately ambiguous (albeit hopeful) conclusion, Salvage may not be for every reader; for those willing to enter into the narrator's convoluted consciousness, however, it may just be a revelation." Bookreporter.com

Review:

"Kotapish mines her unusual premise for all its worth....[H]er ferocious sense of humor often — unexpected and laugh-out-loud funny — and her consistently clever turns of phrase mark her as a writer to watch." Booklist

Synopsis:

"I named my dead sister Nancy and talked to her in the privacy of my closet for eleven years…"

Thus begins Salvage, an electrifying, utterly original debut that explores the collision point of memory, family allegiance, and forgiveness.

After witnessing a horrific, violent act, an unnamed thirty-something woman flees her hectic Manhattan life and buys a rambling house in rural Virginia to recover in peace. But in the quiet of her own company, wandering through her untamed garden by day and drinking before the fire by night, she finds herself facing unanswered questions from her isolated, suburban childhood. And when time spent with her eccentric mother—who is convinced that all her friends are Catholic saints in disguise—threatens to unhinge her altogether, she must decide which haunting memories from her past she should hang onto, and which she might be willing to throw away.

Darkly funny, deeply imaginative and fueled by unexpected, finely-distilled prose, Salvage illuminates the challenge of creating a home that can withstand all that haunts us, and the subtle and often disastrous ways in which mothers and daughters lose and find one another, time and again.

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About the Author

Jane F. Kotapish, a native of Virginia, studied at the College of William and Mary and at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. She is a modern dancer and freelance writer based in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband and daughter. Salvage is her first novel.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
sharon_elin, April 13, 2008 (view all comments by sharon_elin)
Some authors are magicians with words, casting spells that leave readers almost lovesick. In Salvage, I fell in love with Kotapish's stylish, lyrical phrasing and imagery. Take, for example, this description of roses on a fence: "... the roses have completed a magnificent bloom and linger like drunk women at the end of a party, voluptuous past repair, faded, sick with their own perfume." The book's plot weaves like a stage whisper throughout the novel -- the character's first-person musings and point of view reveal much more than any action, and the main theme of the novel emerges as a loose, haunting thread that reticulates her emotional quest: the redemption of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship. The unnamed main character moves to Virginia to recover from witnessing a tragic accident in New York, rekindling her relationship with her often emtionally vacant parent. We see everyone and everything through this main character's eyes and emotions with fragmented, unclear revelations of what actually happened or what is going on; for example, she frequently converses with the spirit of a stillborn sister in a closet, a puzzling derangement that reveals the extent of the character's fragile mental state. In contrast, she enjoys happy rapport with a neighbor, Edith, who is the "normal" antithesis to her own injured persona. The main character explores herself and her mother through a ruthless, probing lens, yet her stream of consciousness remains richly sensitive, expressive, endearing, and enlightened. "Time brings a terrible revealing light to the murk. In the happy ignorance of the moment, things are what they are... Shame arrives later, a rude guest stomping in during dessert with no explanation, dripping weather onto the carpet." This is Jane Kotapish's first novel, and as an entranced reader, I consider myself a new fan.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9781596922839
Author:
Kotapish, Jane
Publisher:
MacAdam/Cage Publishing
Author:
Jane F. Kotapish
Subject:
General
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Mothers and daughters
Subject:
Family secrets
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Edition Description:
Trade Cloth
Publication Date:
20080331
Binding:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Pages:
300
Dimensions:
8.30x6.23x1.14 in. 1.00 lbs.
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Related Subjects

Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z

Salvage New Hardcover
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Product details 300 pages MacAdam/Cage Publishing - English 9781596922839 Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review" by , "Kotapish offers in her unnerving debut a frustrating tale of a woman's struggle to keep her past from overtaking her present. The nameless narrator leads readers through the mazes of her memory, from a childhood spent talking to the ghost of her dead sister, Nancy, through her adult trauma of watching someone get run over by a subway car, and finally to Virginia, where she lives in a ramshackle house. Her cruel mother, Lois, whose sanity is also constantly called into question, becomes the axis on which the narrator's story spins in disjointed bits. The more the narrator reveals, the less reliable she becomes, calling into question whether Nancy is indeed the ghost of her dead sister or simply the personification of repressed grief and resentment. Within this aching knot of remembrance, Kotapish frequently lets her language and attention meander, stringing random thought together in unseemly pastiches that verbosely wind their way to dead ends. The novel has an overly indulgent feel, though some may appreciate the empowering ending." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Review" by , "With a near stream-of-consciousness feel and a deliberately ambiguous (albeit hopeful) conclusion, Salvage may not be for every reader; for those willing to enter into the narrator's convoluted consciousness, however, it may just be a revelation."
"Review" by , "Kotapish mines her unusual premise for all its worth....[H]er ferocious sense of humor often — unexpected and laugh-out-loud funny — and her consistently clever turns of phrase mark her as a writer to watch."
"Synopsis" by ,
"I named my dead sister Nancy and talked to her in the privacy of my closet for eleven years…"

Thus begins Salvage, an electrifying, utterly original debut that explores the collision point of memory, family allegiance, and forgiveness.

After witnessing a horrific, violent act, an unnamed thirty-something woman flees her hectic Manhattan life and buys a rambling house in rural Virginia to recover in peace. But in the quiet of her own company, wandering through her untamed garden by day and drinking before the fire by night, she finds herself facing unanswered questions from her isolated, suburban childhood. And when time spent with her eccentric mother—who is convinced that all her friends are Catholic saints in disguise—threatens to unhinge her altogether, she must decide which haunting memories from her past she should hang onto, and which she might be willing to throw away.

Darkly funny, deeply imaginative and fueled by unexpected, finely-distilled prose, Salvage illuminates the challenge of creating a home that can withstand all that haunts us, and the subtle and often disastrous ways in which mothers and daughters lose and find one another, time and again.
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