Customer Reviews

Mirrors

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Marianne Martin's latest novel, "Mirrors", is the kind of literary prose that tenderly pulls at the strings of your heart and the deep recesses of your mind in regards to love, duty, and friendship. With her well-crafted ability to bring us into the very soul of her characters, Martin introduces us to Jean Carson; a special type of teacher that students look up to and who goes the extra mile to make a difference everyday in their lives. Jean's passion for her career and the stability of her life is upturned when she must face coming out after being in the comfort zone of a heterosexual marriage. Her struggle; a not so uncommon, yet life-altering one, is paralleled in the personal strife of a young, female student who is victimized from being seemingly different to her peers. Shayna Bradley is a confident, sharp lawyer with a sense of justice and a desire to help mothers and their children. Shayna is the kind of friend any woman would want in their back court, but when it comes to relationships work tends to run into over time and romance lingers on the sidelines. Despite this she is grounded in her loyalty to family and friends and drawn deeply to the needs of both. Intertwined by a cherished friendship and lined up together in the battle of conformity versus differentiation, Jean and Shayna must each view what is mirrored in the reflective pool of their hearts. Like soup, Ms Martin once again manages to warm the soul with a stirring, personal look at two women who share a similar consciousness. This is the type of good literature that delves deep, splinters and fragments into a thousand glass pieces for each reader to see a portion of themselves glimmering back from within its pages.

While reading MIRRORS, I found myself wondering; "Do I know these women? They could be my neighbors, my former teachers, the women at the next table in my favorite restaurant." The depth at which I got to know the characters made them as real as my own friends that I wish I could advise and console. And as with real friends, they followed their own sometimes surprising paths and drummed up courage I didn't know they had.
When I got this book as a gift, I wasn't thinking much past the generosity of the friend who gave it to me. After reading the book, though, I realized that the author also gave me a gift. That gift was the effort and painstaking attention to detail that Marianne Martin made in sharing these women with me. She put them in familiar territory and let me know that, often, my struggle with guilt, passion and courage is every woman's struggle. She reminded me that a rare, genuine friendship can survive the most uncertain and painful of situations, and that a soul mate will truly love you no matter how difficult you try to make it. We could all probably stand to be reminded of these things on occasion, and reading MIRRORS is by all accounts a great way to be reminded.

Opening three years after the close of Dawn of the Dance, and set in a small city in Michigan, Mirrors focuses on secondary characters introduced in Dawn: high school teacher, Jean Carson and feminist attorney, Shayna Bradley. Mirrors is well written with realistic characters and depicts important, painful issues for gays and lesbians living in the more conservative regions of the country. Especially those with careers in public education. The novel opens with the new history teacher, Dan Sanders,being fired because the high school principal decided Sanders was gay. Sanders, we're told was not "obvious" nor had he behaved inappropriately to any of the students. Indeed he actually had students liking history. But teaching performance is not the issue. The principal doesn't want queers working for him. As in most of America there is no protection for gay teachers regarding discrimination in employment.

Jean is a thirty-something, physical education teacher. She has spent the last 12 years married to Ken and devoting her time and energy to her students. The latter has helped her avoid some realities about the former. Namely Ken's desire for children and Jean's reluctance for them. It turns out that Jean's avoidance of additional commitment to Ken is rooted in her ambivalence regarding her attractions toward women. This is especially true of her feelings for her best friend, Shayna. A relatively open lesbian attorney who specializes in assisting women in legal struggles, Shayna uses her work to avoid really committing to her girlfriend. Despite their years of perfecting defense mechanisms, neither woman is quite prepared for her feelings for the other. Feelings that grow as both disentangle themselves from dying romantic relationships.

Coming out is a process, not an event, and it's rarely easy. That's one of the themes of Mirrors. Indeed the book provides three reflections on coming out via Jean, Shayna and Lindy, a student at the high school where Jean teaches. Lindy has been struggling with her own sexuality and suffers the routinely harassing attention of several of the male jocks at the school. She will ultimately be attacked because her baby butch appearance threatens some of her classmates. It is Lindy's story that will force Jean to face her own closet, accept the gift of Shayna's love, and risk her job, in the hope of saving other young students.

Martin also provides a mirror for society to consider its role in protecting our young people from bigotry and hate (not to mention rearing them to express said hatred). Mirrors is not my favorite Martin novel; --I prefer her Clan of the Doe stories with Sage Bistro, et al.-- however it is a very good story that can not be told too often. Look into Mirrors, you will no doubt find yourself reflected there as well.

MIRRORS is the kind of story and Marianne Martin the kind of writer that raises this novel heads above the typical lesbian romance.
As a reader I want to know what makes characters tick. Martin understands that. She doesn't tell me that Shayna is a workaholic, she shows me what her days and nights are like and lets me into her head so that I understand why. She makes me feel the love between Jean and her husband and the guilt that Jean holds in her heart. I went to church with Jean and listened to the struggle that she has fought in her head since she was a young girl. These are not characters anymore, they are people that I know and care about. When a crisis arises that threatens their happiness and challenges their courage I worry, and find myself wondering what I would do if it were me in their shoes. All this because Martin knew how to put me right in the middle of their world. I want them to be happy, I want them to be courageous. And I don't know if either is possible for them until the last page of the book. That's why this is such a fine novel and Martin the very best in her genre.

This is not your traditional form of formula romance. Marianne Martin has successfully raised the level of what I now want and expect from this genre. She has created a unique blend of drama, from real life situations, and love, as it evolves from internal struggle.

I was surprised by the depth and complexity of emotions that her characters evoked from me. They ran the gamut from sensing the pain and guilt that Shayna carries from her childhood, feeling the confusion and fear Jean suffers from her Catholic upbringing, to the intensity of love in its many varied forms. As in real life, love is not easily defined or catagorized, but Mirrors offers wonderful reflections of parental love, friendship love, and intimate love.

Mirrors is filled with rich descriptions, full characterizations, well-crafted tension, and some of the best internal dialogue I have read. If you are expecting a romance, Mirrors will give you that and more. If you are expecting a realistic look into the lives of contemporary lesbians, you will not be disappointed. This is an excellent book, one you will enjoy reading and re-reading.

It's no wonder that Mirrors was nominated for a Lammy. Marianne Martin tackles so many issues that confront us all, guilt, commitment, concern, harassment, insecurity, religion, professionalism, and, of course, love. Mostly, Marianne Martin writes about the heroism that occurs in ordinary lives. Sound overwhelming? Not really because of the ease in which she imbues her characters with these human qualities and emotions.

Is this a Romance novel? You bet it is. Does it break the rules? It does so marvelously. Mirrors is the story of two professional women who find themselves more adept at doing the appropriate thing than finding the right thing within themselves. As with all romance novels, they fall in love, but that's when things really start to get complicated. As Bette Davis said in "All About Eve", "Fasten your seatbelts; we're in for a bumpy ride." And what a ride it is? Martin keeps us guessing as to the outcome of several situations up until the end. She also makes us, the reader, look into our own mirrors to view our own behaviors more clearly.

Tautly written, humanly portrayed, and realistically fraught, Martin's characters leap from the page to become your next-door neighbor or one's own niggling conscience. Just as easily, some of these characters could be drawn from today's headline news stories.

Buy this book. You'll be happy you did. It makes for an excellent read.

It's exciting when a writer picks up minor characters from a previous work and gives them a novel of their own. These two women were worthy of the effort. This novel delivers everything I've learned Martin delivers: strong characterizations, insightful internal monologues and plots based on the grey areas of life. Martin excels at issues that ought to be black-and-white and shows how complicated they can turn out to be.

What really struck me about this book, though, was how Martin seems to be stretching her wings a bit. The book is longer, and more time is given to the entire backdrop of these women's lives, not just where their lives intersect. The characterizations are strong as usual, but they're also rich with small details.

I've really noticed that Bella Books is delivering longer, more complicated works from established writers. I already thought Martin was a fine writer. If Mirrors is anything to go by, she will soon be a truly great one now that she is with a publisher that seems to let writers fly to new heights.

I noticed one of the reviewers said they were confused and thought they may have missed a prequel to MIRRORS. Longtime Martin readers know that this author takes characters that she has introduced in one book and makes them the main characters in another. She develops them and their story over more than one book like mystery and sci-fi writers often do.

Although I know it is somewhat unusual for romance writers to use it, I really like this concept. The reader gets to see how the characters fit into regular lives with on-going friendships, new friendships, changing jobs, or moving from one place to another. MIRRORS is a dynamic standalone book, but you do learn more about Shayna and Jean from reading Dawn of the Dance where they were introduced.

I met Marianne Martin at a signing in P-Town and she explained that she decided on this concept when the length of her first book was limited by the publisher and she was unable to tell the whole story in one book. I thank her for working around her limitations to give me the whole story even though I have to buy more than one book to get it. It is worth it.

It would help readers who are not familiar with this author if the publisher would include a page at the beginning of her books that explains what books should be read together, like they do with other series books.

For the sake of clarity, three of Martin's other books form a trilogy of sorts. It's best to read them in this order: Legacy of Love, Love in the Balance, Never Ending. Although Shayna Bradley is a powerful, sexy, and yes vulnerable, character like I love to visualize and read about, Sage Bristo is still my favorite. But don't miss MIRRORS and Dawn.

I'm not an athlete. I didn't even like P.E., but I loved the badminton scene, and I loved Jean. Why couldn't I have had a teacher like her? ... Anyway, the badminton scene didn't have anything to do with winning or losing the game, it was all about what was learned in the process, and winning over a student. I thought it was a clever and exciting way to show the reader how much her students meant to Jean. Her interaction with her students shows a large part of who Jean is; without seeing this part of her we cannot really understand her decisions regarding Ken and Shayna, and her turmoil with Lindy.

The game scene was also a pivotal part of the plot, which I won't spoil here. I really love how the author uses the active scenes to offset the quieter, internal monologues that she does so well. I think they really pick up the pace of the story and keep it moving very well.

I love this book and I see by one of the other reviews that it has been nominated for a Lammy Award. I think it deserves an award because it is not only a well-written and interesting story, it is one with an important lesson and very powerful message. MIRRORS and Marianne Martin has my two thumbs up!

I really enjoyed the depth to Mirrors. The characters were very three dimensional and the descriptions of the conflicts and compromises they had to deal with as a lawyer and a teacher were compelling. One of the things I really admired about this book was the fact that Marianne K Martin avoided those 'sitcom' moments of resolution - the book addressed hard issues in a realistic manner. I was very satisfied at the end of the novel, although I would not mind hearing about these characters in the future.