Customer Reviews

Awake

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A big fan of Elizabeth Graver's, I've read everything she's written that I've been able to get my hands on. While I've enjoyed all of her work, AWAKE shows the way in which Graver keeps getting better. A story about a woman struggling to find happiness and wholeness of self in midlife, AWAKE beautifully captures the inner workings of the protagonist, Anna's, mind. But it's not just Anna that the reader gets to know, as Graver also brings to life Anna's family members (Ian, her husband, and her two boys), as well as friends and lovers from the past and present. The story kept me reading (you want to know where Anna's "awakening" will lead her), but so too did the prose itself. The sentences are REMARKABLE - so dense and flawlessly written, I found myself going back over some of them just to savor the words. Get this book! You won't regret it.

I read this novel in one sitting and was totally amazed by Elizabeth Graver's ability to capture the inner life of her narrator. The book starts out looking like it's going to be about raising a child with a serious illness, but it turns out to be about the mother--how much she both loves her family and yearns for parts of her old, pre-mother self; how she struggles with questions of identity and motherhood and love and marriage. The book is set at a camp where all activities take place at night (the sick son can't be in the dark), and the imagery is gorgeous. I've read Graver's other two novels and loved those, too, but I this one feels like her most mature and ambitious. And it's a GREAT read.

This is the story of Anna, and her husband Ian,who had a
"normal life" with their oldest son Adam.But a few years pass
and they have a second son,Max,handicapped by a condition
called XP,due to a recessive gene,from each parent.Max cannot
be exposed to daylight.He may also, as he grows develop
cancerous tumors and die young.
Confronted with these problems,the structure of the family
seems to be coming apart.Anna,the mother,has put away her
talents to homeschool Max.
The emotions concerning her son,his condition,her thoughts,
are causing her to unravel.What she goes through is so deeply
overwhelming,only another mother or father of a handicapped
child can understand.It is called grief!
Anna is desperate to connect with someone,due to isolation.
When she approaches a best friend,a doctor who just gave
birth to one month old twins,there is no understanding.
This problem is so big and chronic,people don't want to hear
about it.
The previous year,the family had attended a special camp
for XP children and their families.At the camp,Anna comes
alive,there are others,just like Max,and she is becoming
attracted to the owner,leader(a widower)who has a daughter
with the XP gene.
It is hard to tear yourself from this book to read what
comes next?The writing is superb and the story must unfold.

The story of Max with XP, the light sensitivity disease notwithstanding, Elizabeth Graver captured with such precise detail what is in the mind of the woman losing her identity in the day-to-day struggle of family life, it boggled my mind and I'm sure there are many women out there who related as well as I did. The spiril down when you haven't come first for so long, you don't recognize yourself in the mirror because you never take the time to look into it. Add to that the fact that it was so beautifully written, when I finished it, I wanted to start the book all over again. I found myself reading passages over.

I will lend this book to a friend, but I'll be selective because it's a book with a message. Let's not pass judgement.

I thought the author really captured the slow, inner, oft-disguised unravelling of a mother whose child has a disability. The isolation and the loneliness is there, set against the richness of a fascinating environment at the XP kids' camp. Plus the relationship aspects were gripping. I really enjoyed it and I hope her work continues to appear.
Christy

Anna is the mother of Max, who has a rare genetic disease called xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) that results in light causing extreme pain and cancer. So he lives in the dark, and she does too, while her husband and other son thrive in the daylight. Attending an XP summer camp seems to a way to help Max experience a slice of normal life. But given the chance to relax, Anna is drawn to the camp founder.

When I first started reading this, I thought I'd get a chance to learn about XP. I only learned the bare bones because Max's story is not the focus. This story is all about Anna, who goes through a midlife crisis, depression, and commits infidelity, with all its repercussions.

The writing itself was beautiful. There were lots of beautiful phrases and descriptions. Very dreamy and image evoking. Which makes sense when you consider the story is told from the viewpoint of an artist. As I was reading, I kept thinking that the book was gray. If a book could be represented by a colour, this one would be grey, in all its varying shades. There is very little joy or happiness, mostly sadness and depression, which I guess I see as gray.

As a character, Anna was very self-absorbed and selfish, which I associated with a midlife crisis. She can't see past the mundane details of her life, and how unhappy she is. The only thing she seems to be able to think of is her desire to escape. This leads to bad decisions, and hurt feelings all around.

There were some graphic sex scenes, but not in the steamy, passionate sense. Fitting with the overall feel of the book, the scenes were factual and stark, which made them seem more vulgar.

Overall, this is not a light read. It is dark and depressing, and leaves a slightly bad feeling in your mouth. But if you look at the writing itself, it's beautiful. Quite a contrast filled book.

The novel Awake, by Elizabeth Graver, holds power in its knowledge, its awareness of maternal nature. Graver takes on the trepidatious theme of lost self when absorbed by wifehood and motherhood.

Her prose is brimming with insight about our choices, relationships, and defeat in a tone of moderated confession, neither remorseful nor boastful. "We're just animals with noisy minds," the narrator muses after an intoxicating, escapist, adulturous encounter. "For the first time in years, I wasn't looking or attending, protecting, feeding, prodding or keeping track. Gone. It was my greatest fear, but at that moment it meant nothing to me. I was no longer a mother, scarcely a human. I knew nothing of family or love or sickness or death or the long, hard work it takes to live even the most ordinary life. I knew nothing."

I could say much more, but that would spoil the unraveling for others. I remain moved by this book, which made me appreciate my insomnia and gave me much to think about and even abashedly relate to.

This is the story of Anna Simon, a 42 year old wife and stay at home mother of two boys, Adam who is thirteen years old and Max who is nine. Anna's husband Ian is a social studies teacher and coach. Anna had been and artist, a painter and worked as an art teacher before her children were born.

Nine year old Max has XP, Xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare congenital disorder that makes sunlight toxic to him. Over the years Anna has struggled to accommodate Max's special needs. The summer he is nine they decide to go to a special camp for kids with XP, where the children can relax and the parents can share their experiences.

During their stay at Camp Luna Anna begins to enjoy spending time away from her family and rediscovering her former self.

The details of the story were very slow to emerge. The peripheral characters were not developed and only mentioned briefly. But that doesn't detract from the story. This is the story of Anna's choices and how they effect her and those who love her.

There is constant imagery of shadow, light versus dark and inversion of night and day. As well as the shape of connectedness, three form a triangle and four a rectangle. And it's interesting to see the different points of these shapes change as the story evolves.

I think Elizabeth Graver is a wonderful writer. I especially loved her novel Unravelling. I think she does a wonderful job describing Anna's isolation from the world and from within her own family. And an equally wonderful job describing the struggles within Anna's marriage. She paints a very realistic portrait of a woman and her struggle to find herself and happiness.

At first I was captivated by this finely written novel, but by the second half of the book, I wondered if I was still reading the same story. After a solid beginning, I was drawn into a past life of the protagonist that bore little, if no relation, to the current circumstances of the story. And then, as time went on, the protagonist (and antagonist) became unlikable to such a degree as to become almost despicable. By the end of the book, I felt like the air had been left out of my bicycle tires--deflated and annoyed. Elizabeth Graver is a superb writer, but she needs to create characters that matter to the reader, instead of creating ones that disappoint and annoy the reader.

I understand exactly what she is going through, because I am living it myself. My daughter who is eight years old has EPP which is a porphyria in which she can not be in the sun either. Elizabeth Graver in her writing made me put her disease in perspective.