Customer Reviews

Marie, Marie, Hold On Tight

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Terri Brown-Davidson is a masterful writer. The crux of the narrative hinges on the uncompromising and out of control relationship between a mother and daughter. The potential darkness of mother love is brought to a whole new level by Marie's mother--we fear her, we despise her and yet we yearn for her and love her in the same way Marie does. The book delivers a hopefulness one can only feel when a young girl learns that her survival is not only inevitable but necessary.

I believe a story as dark and challenging as "Marie, Marie, Hold On Tight" is one we don't often get to see in today's marketplace. As I read I was reminded of another unflinching masterpiece, Tillie Olsen's "Yonnondio" and I was grateful that Dr. Brown-Davidson was brave enough to write with such clarity of vision.

A book I couldn't put down and ended up reading in one sitting. Its opening, with an image of the narrator painting and then a jump cut to her sleeping boyfriend gives me just enough information on the characters to give them life and to know their relationships to eachother without feeding me lots of backstory.

Marie is skillfully drawn. She wears her self-judged guilt like an aura, the force of which taints every aspect of her life from school to home, from public to private. The mother is terrifyingly real and the interaction between Marie and her mother is nightmarishly vivid and shocked me at the point of its hard revelation.

In fact, reading the book was a procession of shocks, all which served to keep me up reading rather than putting it down to read the following day.

I will never forget the image presented when Lissie is trying to hide in the log. Surprising and horrific.

Well done,Brown-Davidson.

Terri Brown-Davidson is a writer possessed of certain genius. Her narrative inventiveness combined with her pyrotechnical writing skills make for a simply unbelievable brew of storytelling magic. Armed with a bag of verbal magic, Brown-Davidson is forced to elevate the English language to keep pace with her wondrous imagination. Familiar themes of familial abuse and dysfunction, misplaced love and the redeeming joys of art, are spun together in such a way as to adjust our notions of character and plot to accomodate the wizardry with which she spins them into a haunting parallel world that never ceases to entertain and amaze the reader.

Terri Brown-Davidson's haunting first novel Marie, Marie, Hold On Tight, dark as a Grecian tragedy, illuminates the twisted relationships of the beautiful, but unstable, Jennifer Prescott and her daughters, Marie and Alyssa.

When Dan, Jennifer's lowlife poster-boy of a lover, returns after a six-year absence and takes over, teen-aged Marie, the gifted, but alienated, anguished - and inescapably unreliable - narrator must face the disarray and grief of her childhood; and confront her own crime as well as the inexplicable crimes of her wayward mother; a mother often indifferent and careless of her daughters, yet magical:

But then, we all loved the globe. Worshipped the globe, as well as Momma's animation that resulted from her playing with it. She'd spin it with one elegant nail, slam the finger down on a continent before it slowed. We'd squeal, excited as she was when it paused, though we knew that most times Momma cheated, tried to make it stop on Africa.

The writing is tight -- evocative, compelling -- it's difficult to select a sentence to convey the effect. Perhaps the following paragraph wherein Marie, convinced she is herself ugly (despite signs the blight is ending), knows her mother is beautiful, a view reinforced by the reactions of strangers:

"We glide through double doors, Momma preceding me, and eyes - many eyes - move toward her emerald-suited splendor; just loud enough for me to detect, a man murmurs to his wife, "My God: what hair," and I sense Momma grinning beside me, pleased beyond reason as she tosses snack after snack into the shopping cart--"

Haven't you known women like Jennifer, women who shop as greedily as they devour attention? But Jennifer is inscrutible, complex; and like the best of mothers tries to prepare Marie for life by taking her along not only to the market but to more than one workplace:

". . . at the Kawasaki factory . . . hunched over a table littered with bolts, screws, her shoulders bent into an "S" as she worked along the conveyer-belt, her fingers spasming, sweating as she struggled to keep up . . . the other women older, fatter, coarse, their faces lined with grime, their gray hair tucked into spiderweb nets, their faces forced blossomings of moles, sun-toughened skin: they hated my mother because she was young - because she was beautiful - . . . shoes tapped out the rhythms of "Hound Dog" as they sang and joked and laughed, their fat fingers never missing a screw; and when Mother sagged over the conveyer belt, her knees buckling, the teasing increased, the vitriol sharpened, shouts of "Prescott, Prescott, where're your balls?" filled the long gray room, and still the belt rolled over, rolled on as Momma quietly fainted and two tough, muscular women stepped in hastily, pulled her away from the line."

Marie reasons her mother's gallant efforts to stay afloat are a way of apologizing - although for what is going on at home there can be no apology - of demonstrating she can do no better and the unspoken hope Marie will have a better life than her own or that of Alyssa, of whom neither can bear to think. Jennifer's job at the abattoir is clearly the end of the line as far as financial independence goes.

"The meat-packing plant is huge and square and gray, like an enormous box that leaks sweat, water trickling down its outer walls. There are some windows set into the box, but they show only an inner darkness, shadowy shapes, people moving within, so quiet they might, themselves, be a dream. Steam rises from several pipes that push up like thick fingers from the roof of the plant. Grabbing Momma's hand as we approach, I feel a weird excitement though Momma doesn't look pleased."

And Marie will have a better life, if she can get past the horrific scene six years ago when Dan left. If she can come to terms with her mother's subsequent actions. If she can stay with Dell, the young poet who is her soul mate, and whose love may help her escape the past to become the artist she is meant to be.


*the title is from T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland

This review first appeared in Issue 19 of In Posse Review

As far as I'm concerned, it is. Terri doesn't merely draw characters like a cartoonist. She creates imaginary people that live and draw breath in your imagination. If I could write like her, maybe I could do something besides computer books! If you like good writing, you have GOT to have this book.

Marie, Marie Hold On Tight
by Terri Brown-Davidson

Terri Brown-Davidson's novel Marie, Marie Hold On Tight is not for the squeamish and should, perhaps, have been titled, Reader, Reader, Hold On Tight. But, despite the depths of depravity that are explored a shaft of light shines througout the novel. Marie's is a story of cruelty, insanity, incest, and murder. Her's is also a story of love and survival. A reader with courage will know and understand Marie and hope, maybe pray, that she will endure. Read this book and be rewarded. Mrs. Brown-Davidson's writing is poetry disguised as prose.

Five stars.

A difficult,disturbing, but nonetheless hopeful story about an abused young artist who must acknowledge and eventually face her own part in the horrors of her brief life. Honest, compelling, poetic writing .

Terri Brown-Davidson is such a masterful writer that you're reminded of the power of words on every stunning page. But she's more than a poet of language and imagery. She's an artist of the human psyche. It's a dark tale about a girl who suffers the most horrific abuse and is unable to escape. And yet, there's a light in this child that can't be extinguished. Her secret world of hope revolves first around art, and then a young man who falls in love with her and sees the beauty of her soul. So as dark and haunting as this book is, it ultimately tells the tale of that vital spark of humanity that stays lit even in the direst circumstances. To me, "Marie, Marie, Hold on Tight" is a book about hope.

Reviewed by Katie Weekley for Small Spiral Notebook

Within the few chapters of debut novel, Marie, Marie, Hold on Tight, Terri Brown-Davidson wallops the reader with the two big tragedies of her narrator: the death of her baby sister, Alyssa Ellen, and the ongoing abuse by her mother. What else could possibly happen that could keep us reading? Even Marie seems incapable of imagining any change or improvement in her life. She seems to turn to her boyfriend, Dell for help, telling him:

"I love you too," I say softly, tracing his cheek with one finger. "But if you tell anyone about my mother, I promise I'll never speak to you again."

I know he believes me because he shuts up quickly, not angry but despairing: I'm excellent at reading emotions - Momma's given me years of practice.

Marie has spent the years since Alyssa's death, tiptoeing on the edge, nervously anticipating any change in her mother's mood, yet loyally standing by, defying anyone who says she deserves to be treated better. Marie understands the restlessness of her mother, the woman who before clocking in at the meat-packing plant every day, sits gazing out at a field of rippling veldt, only able to escape in her mind, and only for a few hours a day. Marie fears she may be cursed with the same wanderlust, impossible to fulfill.

Terri Brown-Davidson's writing is as taut as the fine tightrope Marie is walking. In a situation where the protagonist seems to have no hope for change, Brown-Davidson manages to maintain a gripping narrative, densely weaving Marie's past and present. Brown-Davidson has previous published a book of poetry, and while this influence is evident in her lyrical, visual style, she has deftly matched the richness of her writing with an cold, economic presentation of events, telling us exactly what we need to know about Marie.

This novel is about the dead-end cycle of abuse, and how difficult it is to escape the damage done. And although it is not a happy story, it is strangely optimistic, because only when Marie is faced with the worst situation yet, does she find the strength in herself to believe that she does not have accept the same destiny as her mother.

This novel is riveting from start to finish. Marie, the teenage protagonist is so well drawn and compelling, I had to stay with her to the end.

There are few contemporary novels which cross genres so effectively, and this one did just that. Not only is it a literary story filled with georgeous language, it's a horror story too. Brown Davidson does not shrink from exploring all the dark corners of what Marie must endure. Like the best of Stephan King, Brown Davidson forces us to experience the unspeakable.And it makes for an unforgettable read. As a literary novel, comparisons can be made to Janet Fitch's "White Oleander." Both present powerful female adolescent protagonists who must live by their wits.

Plan ahead. You won't put this book down until you finish it.