{"id":650,"date":"2012-07-17T13:38:33","date_gmt":"2012-07-17T19:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=650"},"modified":"2012-07-17T13:38:33","modified_gmt":"2012-07-17T19:38:33","slug":"cornelia-read-valley-of-ashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/cornelia-read-valley-of-ashes\/","title":{"rendered":"Cornelia Read: Valley of Ashes"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/form>\n

Sorrow is always your own, offering no temptation to fickle gods.\u00a0 Fucking joy, on the other hand?\u00a0 You might as well string your heart from the ceiling for use as a frat-party pi\u00f1ata.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I don\u2019t think I\u2019m exaggerating when I say that Cornelia Read\u2019s voice is one of the most original, vivid and memorable in all of contemporary crime fiction.\u00a0 I think I would be happy to read anything she wrote, in novel form or no, but happily she also writes wonderful novels.\u00a0 While her books are technically a series, I think each of them stand well alone, and each have a different slant which sets them apart from one another.<\/p>\n

Her central character, Madeline Dare, has held various jobs including teaching at a school for disturbed children.\u00a0 In this installment she and her husband Dean have moved to Boulder, Colorado, with their almost one year old twin girls in tow.\u00a0 While in many respects the two authors couldn\u2019t be more different, the book this called to my mind was Celia Fremlin\u2019s 1958 classic, The Hours Before Dawn,<\/em> which, along with a kick-ass suspense story, also looked at the difficulties of living with a newborn.<\/p>\n

Other women have written about living with children since Fremlin, of course, but not until I read this book was I forcibly reminded of the knife edge of child rearing: exhaustion tempered with love tempered with \u2013 how do I get through the day?<\/em> Fremlin\u2019s character is walked on by her mother-in-law; Read\u2019s by her increasingly distant and dictatorial husband.<\/p>\n

Read is not a simple, straightforward storyteller as Fremlin was, however.\u00a0 Her stories are layered and rich, giving a well rounded picture of all the parts of Madeline\u2019s life \u2013 from her landing a part time writing job to the joy of her children to her exhaustion to her puzzlement over her husband\u2019s behavior to the burgeoning friendships she finds with a co-worker of Dean\u2019s and with a woman who is an arson investigator.<\/p>\n

The mystery part lies in a series of fires around Madeline\u2019s neighborhood.\u00a0 The character of the arson investigator, Mimi, is a very strong one.\u00a0 The details of her investigation, and Madeline\u2019s growing interest in it, despite the fact that she has been hired as a part-time restaurant reviewer and not as a crime reporter, are completely understandable.\u00a0\u00a0 Another thing that makes Read a memorable writer is the fact that she has so much empathy for the victim of any crime.\u00a0 She rarely reserves any of that empathy for herself, however.<\/p>\n

Part of the story also lies in whatever is going on at Dean\u2019s workplace, something that involves her new friend Cary and their bosses\u2019 secretary, a Japanese woman named Setsuko.\u00a0 Dean is distant and demanding, and though sometimes he checks in to be loving, it\u2019s obvious to the reader and to anyone who has ever raised children who is doing the lion\u2019s share of the work around the house.<\/p>\n

The threads of the arson story, the workplace story, and the story of Madeline\u2019s marriage and motherhood ultimately all tie together.\u00a0 While most of the crimes involve arson, there\u2019s also a murder, and a really cool resolution to the death that surprised me when I read it.<\/p>\n

The heart of the book is Madeline\u2019s family story, which involves both betrayal and love, as well as heartbreak. Madeline is a wonderful creation, strong yet vulnerable; smart, but somehow sometimes clueless; opinionated,\u00a0 interesting and observant.\u00a0 She couldn\u2019t be more real. The final pages will no doubt make you long for the next part of the story.\u00a0 As long as Read is willing to tell one, I\u2019m willing to listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorrow is always your own, offering no temptation to fickle gods.\u00a0 Fucking joy, on the other hand?\u00a0 You might as well string your heart from the ceiling for use as a frat-party pi\u00f1ata. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m exaggerating when I say that Cornelia Read\u2019s voice is one of the most original, vivid and memorable in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-psychological"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}