Bereft

** By Jane Bernstein. The quality of the writing should probably rate this book higher than I'm doing, but the book didn't wow me quite enough to give it a three.

In this extended personal essay, Bernstein weaves together her search for the truth about her sister's senseless murder in 1966 and her realizations of how deeply that murder has impacted the rest of Bernstein's life -- though she didn't know until decades later. We follow her through her college, through an abusive marriage, parenthood, and her journeys to Arizona where her sister was murdered. And throughout the book, we learn as Bernstein learns that denial is not the same as a lack of feeling, and that the holes denial leaves in our lives can be bigger than the original losses.

While I did find the story very interesting, the style and storytelling did not impress me particularly. Most of the times I felt that the word choice was bland, the tone as subdued and monotone as your typical story out of a literary magazine. (That translates to high quality but boring.) And then at times, particularly when she wrote about her abusive husband, I felt like I was reading a supermarket "based on the true story" book... but more snobby.

I'm probably coming down on this book a little harder than I might if I didn't know that Bernstein is an admired CMU creative writing prof. But then, she's not really doing anything differently from nearly every other hot "literary" writer right now. And that, in my opinion, is a problem itself.

Posted by Lisa on April 17, 2003 08:45 PM