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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful story!, August 11, 2001
This review is from: The Cloths of Heaven: A Novel on overcoming disability (Paperback)
The Cloths of Heaven transports the reader not only to a different time and place, but also puts him or her into a different skin. Sheila McGann, the narrator of this story, is a young girl whose body is ravaged by the ruin of cerebral palsy but her mind, oh her mind! Her speech may be slurred but her mind is razor sharp and the knowledge that her mind must forever be enclosed in a body that is virtually useless only serves to heighten the strengths of this young woman. We first meet Shelia and her mother the day that Kitty and her daughter Maud move into the neighborhood in a camper. Kitty, a free spirit, and Maud, her beautiful daughter, are the polar opposites of Sheila and Eileen - or Mam as she is called. Differences notwithstanding, or more likely because of them, the four quickly become fast friends. This is a different coming of age story - a story that tells of the hopes and fears of two girls: one a prisoner of her twisted body, the other a prisoner of mistaken ideas of love and acceptance. It is a story of the friendship and jealousies that shape their relationship. It is also the story of the women who are mothers to these girls, the things that haunt them, the things that set them free, the worries they have for their children and for themselves. Set against the turbulent background of Ireland in the 70's and the changing ideas about the role that women and disabled people have in the world, The Cloths Of Heaven paints a picture that is sometimes funny, sometimes sad and always engaging. Geraldine Nesbitt's writing reminds me of an Irish Anne Tyler, relating a tale of extraordinary beauty about ordinary people. This is one you should read.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths..., April 23, 2001
This review is from: The Cloths of Heaven: A Novel on overcoming disability (Paperback)
In this page turning episode written through the voice of Sheila McGann, a teenager stricken at a young age by cerebral palsy, we learn ironic truths about freedom. The characters could be your next door neighbors, and yet, written against the backdrop of the upsurging Northern Irish conflict in the 1970's, the cultish lure of the IRA, the tortuous restrictiveness of Irish religion for modern priests and the people of Ireland, held back while looking on feverishly through new media to a world where artists such as David Bowie are pushing the boundaries of personal freedom, are, for this American reviewer, almost as exotic as a trip to the Serengheti or the Galapogos. With deep empathy and skill, Nesbitt has created a narrator for whom we are able to acknowledge through our minds and thoughts what through our eyes and experience we may not have been able to, granting through the "read" word the spectrum of human emotion to this young woman, who does not walk or write with the usual tools, whose speech is elongated and at times incomprehensible, who cannot even take herself to the toilet. Here is a severely handicapped woman reconciling her limitations to her most intimate relationship. Episode after episode after being seen, really seen, and really loved by other characters, Maud, Liam, Mam, Donal and Michael Daly, Sheila finally gives up on the choices that would allow her to remain invisible. Ironically, it is the more physically attractive and unconfined characters in the story who do not escape their invisibility: the handsome Liam, lured to his early demise by the cultish appeal of the IRA; Maud, the beautiful young albeit confused teenager whose story leads the reader to compelling conclusions about the plight of the unwed mother in Catholic Ireland; the neglected Maisie, the quintessential Irish housewife bound by duty and female obligations, and finally eaten away from the inside of the physical symbols of her castigated femininity; and Michael Daly, a young modern-thinking priest bound by his religion to a life-style not necessarily suited to his personality. At the end of this chronicle, we find that our coming-of-age narrator Sheila, set free to us by her written word, is on the verge of a promising journalistic career. In her first assignment, she finds she must reflect on her relationship with the tragic Maud. "Why would she lie to me?" she asks herself. For Sheila the question is "How am I worthy of being lied to?" For the reader, by this time, the thread of duplicity points to a rigid society that paves the way for false faces and secrets. For Maud, a victim of that societal rigidity, the lies built that young soul a fortress for the most vulnerable part of her human anatomy, her heart.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
MAEVE BINCHY YOU HAVE COMPANY, October 2, 2001
This review is from: The Cloths of Heaven: A Novel on overcoming disability (Paperback)
Set in 1970's Limerick, this Irish tale is inspiring. The characters are complex, not easily molded by the reader into one mind set. Sheila, dealing courageously with cerebral palsy, still has a darker side that makes her deliciously human and real. Maud, her best friend, fights a lack of crippling self esteem with tragic results, yet has redeeming and lovely atrributes to educate the reader. The plotline slightly bobbled at times, but for the most part it flowed and kept me turning pages. It is a lovely first effort from an author I can see rivaling her Irish predecessors. Well worth your investment of time and money. Quite a heavenly read indeed!!
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