Customer Reviews

And Give You Peace

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I read "And Give You Peace" with excruciating wonder. It's a gorgeous amalgamation of pain, humor, tenderness, insanity, vulnerability, strength and finally wisdom. This outstanding sort of fusion is made possible by a remarkable narrator, one that fills the book with a solidly authoritative, yet damaged and world weary voice. The clarity and precision with which Anastasia, the book's narrator, tells her story produced in me a trust that lasted the entirety of the book. There are no "cheap shots" here, nothing comes easy. The relationships within the family are written with a subtlety that charmes: a look here, a glance there, an emotion unsaid. It's refreshing to read into characters with a reader's imagination without the forced focus of overbearing prose. Treadway's style allows your imagination to be an anonymous character in the book, something that allowed me to cherish the book even more. The pages of "And Give You Peace" pulsate with a vitality that Anastasia's voice carries throughout the book, melding with the tragic undercurrents. For me, the book reaffirms the importance of living WITH circumstance, rather than merely living through it. I love the book. My reading of "And Give You Peace" has been time well spent, and I am a better man for having read it. Be prepared for a wealth and range of emotion. Good stuff.

There is a moment of intimate shock in Jessica Treadway's novel AND GIVE YOU PEACE where the narrator, eldest sister of three, breaks out of the third-person convention into direct address to her reader. "Do you know that hymn?" she asks, as with her mother and surviving sister she makes her way to the graves of her father and the little sister he has murdered at the start of this riveting, heartbreaking story of family love. "The words move across the music with a sharp, sweet pain, which, once you've felt it, stays as memory in your bones: The Lord bless you and keep you, / The Lord lift his countenance upon you, / . . . The Lord make his face to shine upon you, / And give you peace." In that brief and unrepeated narrative break Treadway holds her reader naked against this story's almost unbearable pulse, branding it into bone-memory too.

AND GIVE YOU PEACE begins by relating the unspeakable and then unfolds like a long, confidential murmur to an intimate friend -- filled with bitchy asides, hilariously observed detail, and unreplicable sisterly lore -- which its listener never wants to stop. Anastasia Dolan needs us to know the whole story if we are to understand, finally, the worst of it; so she moves us matter-of-factly back from the day her father snapped, and into the sweet thicket of family connection that binds the Dolans close in its thorny embrace. ("We are the Dolans, mighty mighty Dolans," they sing on car trips, echoing the cheer.) And as we hear the details -- the father's compulsions about contagious disease, the girls' rivalries, the way the mother accommodates and compromises them all -- a picture of love emerges so truthful that even the most repugnant fact, in the end, can yield a kind of peace.

Treadway's ability to pull this off -- to render joy through unimaginable pain -- starts with her masterful narrative choice to give us the bad news first. Going back from there, she unearths everything we'll need to go on. And so when the narrator turns her voice nakedly to us at the cemetery -- "Do you know that hymn?" -- we flinch in recognition, and then enter the grieving circle, willingly or not. We are the Dolans, too, approaching impossibility one step at a time, singing our sad triumphant song into the past and into the possible future.

Very rarely can a novel bring me to tears--this one did. Treadway's story of a family trying to piece together the clues of an unthinkable tragedy works like a mystery-in-reverse. Though we know the outcome at the start, rather than simply flashback to find the clues, the story instead moves forward, following the characters as they struggle to go on with their lives. This forward movement, in turn, provides the backdrop and the impetus for investigation of the past. In this forward-yet-backward movement, Treadway masterfully keeps us riveted in the what-will-happen, while at the same time engaging us in the mystery of the what-did-happen. It's a fresh and interesting way to build a narrative, and kept me rapt from the first page through the last.

Not only is it artfully constructed, it also has amazing emotional depth--I cried not for the characters, but for myself, because I had BECOME the characters. Treadway has such a beat on the pulse of human nature that the reader slips effortlessly into the world of the novel, recognizing one's own thoughts, feelings, quirks and actions on every page. Though few people can say they have experienced the same tragedy as this family, the feelings and behaviors of the characters are so real, so everyday, that it's impossible not to experience the characters themselves.

It's a wonderful novel and acheives the rare combination of literary mastery with page-turning pace. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys excellent fiction of any genre.

So many authors like to spike their book with horrific tragedy as a hook, the better to reel us in and fascinate us. What I admire about And Give You Peace is that Treadway is more interested with bookending such event, showing us the family portrait before and after it was ripped to shreds, and the small and mundane ways in which define ourselves, and our families, and how those memories serve or trap us when we necessarily try to put a life together again. This novel sneaks in and whallops you with control and subtlety which will leave you stunned and, undoubtedly,impressed.

AND GIVE YOU PEACE is the most memorable novel about family that I've read in years. It is full of wisdom, sadness, and truth. I ached for the main character, who seeks redemption in the face of unimaginable loss. The author's generous vision and sumptuous writing make this book a keeper, one to share with others who enjoy the transformative and life-affirming power of great fiction. Wow!

I had read Jessica Treadway's fiction before (her collection of stories, Absent Without Leave, published in 1993), and so I was excited to come across her novel, the premise of which comes from a true-to-life event. But that event -- a shocking crime in a small town -- provides only the scaffolding; the author "fleshes it out" by giving us the interior, often painful lives of her characters, the members of a family remaining after two have died a violent, virtually unspeakable death. I had been concerned, at first, that the author might lean too heavily on the sensational nature of her plot, but it becomes clear, very soon, that her aim is to understand -- and perhaps to help readers understand -- how a family can go wrong, and what devastating manifestations of that wrongness might ensue. The best recommendation I can give this book is to say that I have two children, ages 4 and 2, and I hardly ever finish a magazine, let alone a novel. But this kept me riveted. It moved me in a way I did not expect, but for which I felt very grateful. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes to read stories about families and all that is in them -- love, hate, betrayal, pride, jealousy, kindness, fear, and back to love, where it all began for the Dolan family in And Give You Peace.

I had read Jessica Treadway's short stories before (published in her collection And Give You Peace (1993), and so I was very excited to come across her novel, which is based on a true-life event (although the author has used only the scaffolding of that event -- the circumstantial facts; the rest is emotional speculation about what happens to the remaining members of a family when two of its members die sudden and violent deaths.) At first I worried that the author might lean on her premise too heavily -- that she would count on the tragedy and sensationalism of the story's central crime, to engage readers, without going deep enough into the characters' inner lives. But I was greatly gratified to feel as if the author were addressing me in an intimate voice about the kinds of feelings most people don't like to examine or talk about: jealousy, anger, love laced with hate laced with love, as all families are. The highest recommendation I can give this book is that I have two small children, ages 4 and 2, and I hardly ever make it through a magazine, let alone a novel. This book kept me riveted, and anyone with little children will understand what an unusual book this must have to be. It moved me in ways I had not expected, but in ways I always fervently hope to be moved in the best fiction. I recommend this novel very highly to anyone who likes to read about families and what can happen when they go wrong.

IMPRESSIONS:
This is a wonderfully written book that illuminates with glaring clarity both the fragility and the strength of the human mind and spirit. We see through the main character's eyes the horrific experience of family tragedy and the subsequent devastation that results. Not only can this book be appreciated for its literary gift and touching use of the English language but the story itself is one that will shake everyone. Do yourself a favor and read this book.

SYNOPSIS:
When an unspeakable tragedy occurs to a family, its members must put back together the pieces of their lives and try to make sense of something that is inexplicable. We see how they cope, how they move on, and what becomes of their lives in the end, despite their troubles. (Don't want to ruin what happens, so I don't want to say what the tragedy is).

REACTION TO OTHER REVIEWS:
All I can say to people who did not appreciate this book is that they missed out on a novel that is beautifully written and tells the timeless story of grief and tragedy that underlies the human experience.

Treadway's a writer with a distinctive voice and deft eye for detail. However, she lamely and shamefully transposes a real life tragedy from Bethlehem, NY in 1982. Call it lazy writing as well; she changes the name of the town but retains so many actual place names and school details from Bethlehem that you have to wonder why she didn't just opt for a Jon Krakauer sort of non-fiction account instead. As for the adaptation of the actual murder-suicide, Treadway takes huge liberties. In short, her novel reads like a sensationalized episode of Law and Order, "ripped from the headlines." For those who lived in the town and knew the family (I was a classmate of the girl who was murdered by her deranged father), this so-called "novel" offers no peace; it prompts disgust.

Jessica Treadway is clearly a writer fascinated by the complexity of the human experience, and in this case -- where a father murders his daughter and then kills himself -- an incomprehensible and shattering loss. Told brilliantly from the point of view of one of the two surviving daughters, the novel is engrossing, moving and deeply insightful. If you want to learn how to write about shock and grief, you would do well to study how Treadway does. If you're suffering shock and grief, you will find truth here and the comfort of knowing you're not alone.