15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I adored this!, June 27, 2002
Already a master of the short story, Elizabeth Inness-Brown now proves herself to be an exceptional novelist as well. BURNING MARGUERITE is one of those rare books that lives beyond its pages.
The novel begins simply: James finds his elderly "guardian" Marguerite dead in the morning snow. What follows, however, is anything but simple: we learn of the complex relationship between James Jack and his Tante Marguerite, of Marguerite's unconventional and tragic past, of what the future might hold for James. Every detail is related with vibrancy and relevance so the reader is constantly engaged in this touching novel of love and death. The world created here is as full and as real as one can find in 250 pages.
Inness-Brown has an astounding talent for narrative and language. She has a deceptively direct style; the words are ordinary but the images and emotions they convey are extraordinary. Her characters are so expertly drawn that they have a depth and humanity that few novelists achieve, let alone in their debuts.
I highly recommend this book. Although readers of literary fiction will be naturally drawn to this novel, readers of more commercial works should also find much to delight them. This accessible tale has a universality that should appeal to a wide range of readers.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lyrical debut novel, August 20, 2003
This review is from: Burning Marguerite (Paperback)
Alternating locale between sultry New Orleans and a cold and craggy New England island, author Inness-Brown uses landscape and 'sense of place' to skillfully enhance the depths of her already very complex and passionate characters. Fire is a recurring motif, having been responsible for initiating the series of tragic events that both unite a family and pull it asunder. Flashbacks aren't supposed to be a popular fiction format, say some, but in Burning Marguerite, they work. Boy, do they work. Don't miss this one.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Burning Marguerite. A North Star Monthly Pick, April 8, 2002
I was in the midst of another book I was reading, when a copy of "Burning Marguerite", came across my desk. It is the just-published, debut novel by Elizabeth Inness-Brown, who had written two collections of short stories previously. The author lives with her husband and young son on the island of South Hero in Lake Champlain, Vermont. South Hero is much like the fictional Grain Island where most of the story takes place. An island to be loved yet feared. With it's rock, flowers, green fields, forests, and leaden gray skies over the water before a storm. It's harsh beauty, a builder of character, as much as a bender of backs and tree limbs. It's deep quarries and rich dirt a place to hide, a place to bury sins.
The sleet peppered against the window as I started to skim through the first pages of the book, just to get an idea of it. Much, much later the sleet had stopped, and the night was deep, and I just could not keep reading. But, my, my, was I hooked. What a glorious first novel she had written.
The next morning, I immediately picked it up and began reading again as the teakettle whistled. Everything else had to wait; I had to finish this book. It wraps the reader in it's textures.
"Burning Marguerite", is the story of James Jack Wright and his "Tante," ninety-four-year-old Marguerite Deo, who raised him from infancy. One chilly snowy morning James Jack finds his beloved aunt lying dead along a trail between her house and the cabin above it that James Jack lived in. As the young man ponders the mystery of why she chose to die there, and how he can secretly honor her final wish, the story spins into the past, then back to the present in Marguerite's voice and in James's. From a tragedy in a shack on the lake during ice fishing that changed both their lives, to Marguerite in New Orleans during the Depression, a young woman finding herself, after running from forbidden love, and a violent act that ended in murder.
After her return years later to the rocky island, determination steels Marguerite's back, and she sets her course; to raise and love the orphan boy named James Jack as her own, come hell or high water. The story of their relationship and decades long love for each other makes this compellingly beautiful, yet heartbreaking work simply, an exquisitely crafted novel.
In "Burning Marguerite", the author has created characters that sing with complexity. moral fiber, and passion. And James Jack's lawbreaking final act of love for his "Tante" brings him maturity as a man that he had lacked up until then. "Tante" had finally set him free.
This book will remain in the heart of the reader, like memories of a loving old aunt or mother forever.
Marvin Minkler of The North Star Monthly
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