Customer Reviews

Aquamarine

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Anshaw writes with a believability that makes you think this is autobiographical. I haven't got any information on that, but I suspect she's just *THAT GOOD* as a writer. Structured as a set of three closely tied "what-if" novelettes which all use the same characters and same protagonist to examine a particular woman's midlife, Anshaw hits the nail on the head again and again. You will not read many novels concerning sexual ambiguity that are as good as this one. And yet the book is about so much else that I feel unfair in pigeonholing it to some kind of "bi-girl" subgenre.

Even though the writing feels light in many places, the effect slowly starts to pile up in heavier and heavier subtexts until it will have knocked you flat by the end, trust me.

This is a book filled with remarkable, vividly drawn characters and places. Smartly interwoven stories told with such splendid honesty and powerful moments that the reader feels compelled to turn the page. If you miss Aquamarine you have missed a beautifully written story.

I had heard many good things about this novel. Anshaw is a fine writer and many of the descriptions of situations and feelings are well-done. However, I just never became very interested in Jesse, the "heroine". Part of the theme of the book is that Jesse reached her peak at the 1968 Olympics and everything after is just epilog, but I still wish the book had helped me connect with her more. The three part structure is a clever concept and I especially enjoyed the parallels between Jesse's universes in the first and second sections. Still, I never felt that Jesse was a particularly interesting or likable character. That's a big problem in a book like this where so much of the book is focused on one character.

In 1968 at the Mexico City Olympics, Jesse Autsin wins a silver medal in the Women's 100-Meters Freestyle. She would have won the gold if it hadn't been for her closest competition, the mysterious and seductive Marty Finch.

Flash forward to July 1990. Jesse is about to turn 40, but is she happy with the choice she made immediately after winning the silver? In an unusual novel, author Carol Anshaw gives us a look into three posibile presents for Jesse.

In the first, she has been married for 20 years to Neal Pratt and still lives in her small hometown of New Jerusalem, Missouri. Her mentally retarded brother lives with them and helps with the upkeeep of Pratt's Caverns, the small business left to them by Neal's parents. Her godmother, Hallie, talks of the upcoming retirement party for Jesse's mother, an English teacher at the local high school. Jesse is content but still wonders about her first love, Marty Finch.

In the second, Jesse is an English professor in New York City, something she thought her mother would be proud of, but isn't. She also lives with her lover, Kit, who plays vampy Nurse Rhonda on a soap opera. Jesse is taking her to her mother's retirement party in New Jerusalem, Missouri, unsure of how the family will react to the two of them together. Her godmother Hallie has always known. Jesse thinks that Kit is going to leave her, especially when Jesse's mother asks her to take in her retarded brother Willie. But, in the back of her mind, she still wonders if she was being used by Marty Finch on that day in Mexico City.

In the third, a divorced Jesse lives in Venus Beach, Florida, with her children Anthony and Sharon. Anthony's had a run-in with the law, and now, his father is on his way from New York to "take care of things." Just what Jesse needs. Her godmother Hallie, who moved to Florida a few years after Jesse, is returning from Jesse's mother's retirement party back in Missouri. She feels as though life has passed her by and wonders if anything really happened between her and Marty Finch, or if it were all just a dream.

Each scenario has many of the same characters (Kit, Hallie, Willie, Jesse's mother, Marty Finch) and similar situations, giving the reader a feeling of looking at lives running parallel to one another. This novel does a marvelous job of weaving together these three scenarios of choices made or passed by and how these choices affect the future and the emotional ties between Jesse and the people in her past. A thought-provoking book, definitely worth reading.

Aquamarine is the kind of book I wanted to savor. It is the only book I ever read which was able to portray the "what ifs" of life so brilliantly; the paths taken and not taken in our lives that eat away at us. I only wish I had written it first!

The "what if" genre of fiction seems popular both in books and in movies today. This book is not just another "Sliding Doors" or "Passion of Mind" work, although being either of those works is not a bad thing to be. Ms. Anshaw wants to illumine character with her plot device--what becomes of an Olympic silver medalist in three alternative scenarios based on different choices the swimmer makes during the next 20 years. The themes of betrayal and its effect on the ability of the betrayed to share intimacy are well spun out here. This is a good book, and the Missouri scenes' atmosphere is very down to earth and real.

Besides relating to the main character's tensility between loving women and loving men, I could also get inside all of the 17 characters and find someone like them in my own life. Any author who can make characters come alive like this is an artist in my book. The dreaminess and soap opera-ness sometimes threw me off, thus it would not make a great movie, but what book ever does? Her writing style is closely aligned with that of Anne Tyler in my opinion. A courageous writer, to explore the topic of who we would be if we took different steps in life, and it ultimately reminded me of the T-Shirt, "Wherever you go, there you are", implying that we all have our lessons we come out of the womb to learn, and she would have to get resolved with Marty and also with her dad's death no matter how colorful or boring her life day-to-day turned out to be.

Carol Anshaw's Aquamarine is inventive without ever being flashy and moving with out ever sentimentalizing. The same woman, imagined in different permutations--divorced mom, stay at home mom, lesbian professional, comes to life in a literary triptych unlike anything I've read. The author's fascinating premise is that there isn't one "unique" self inside us, struggling to be realized, but many possibilities that can float to the surface depending upon choices that at the time they are made which don't seem life determining.

In each of the stories the main character makes a seemingly innocuous choice--whether to stay rural or go urban; marry out of high school or go to university--that completely and radically not only changes her but set her on that "inevitable" course. For all of our "decision making" "career moves" et al we are amazingly malleable and control is pretty much illusion.

Best of all, none of the lives she becomes are judged better or worse. They are just different--variant and perhaps opposite, and yet all are familiar and all are worthy. Whatever your outlook on life, you almost certainly haven't looked at it through this lens.

I read about this book when it first came out. I remembered the reviews were excellent, and when I recently came across a used copy at an AAUW book sale I picked it up. It is now two decades later, and I've finally had an opportunity to read Aquamarine. I regret waiting so long.

It is absolutely one of the best books I have ever read. Carol Anshaw is a brilliant, nuanced writer. She can write descriptive passages, and she can also write dead-on dialogue.

The book is achingly true and human. It is humorous. It is haunting. I have no idea why Carol Anshaw is not better known, but now I need to read everything she's ever written.

Even though I first read this book years ago, I always think about it as I choose the different paths in my life. The main character in this book and her three lives are so believable that they will haunt you forever! I keep searching for more books like this but it is one of a kind indeed. Don't miss it.