Customer Reviews

The Mourners' Bench: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book was a dreadful disappointment to me. A friend at work recommended it highly. I really enjoyed it until I reached the beginning of Chapter 1. Then things got difficult.

My main complaint about the book (besides the fact that it moves slowly and is difficult to slog through) is about the characters... they were dreadfully false. Wim is a sorry sack of a man, who gives up what little promise he has to marry Pamela (the most dour and ill-tempered woman he could find). Then after she dies, and Wim contracts a terminal illness, he naturally flees to Pam's nearest relative: Leandra.

The book's story line is gut-wrenchingly, heart-sickeningly, bone-crushingly melodramatic, and the dialogue (esp. Leandra's Southern "drawl") is stilted and forced.

I realize that this is a mean and biting review... but this was one of the worst five books I have ever read. I had to respond.

The Mourners' Bench is a "must read" for anyone who has ever loved another, nursed someone who is dying or just wants to feel something good way down deep. The sad parts of the book are sad in a good way-the way that lets you feel how powerful love can be and how easily human kindness eases all passings.

I read this as part of a book discussion group - we all agreed that the prose is very well written and seems to move you along effortlessly. We also agreed that the characters of Wim and Leandra are passive and passionless. The only character with passion is Pammy, who has a tragic ending. Not a sad book by any means, haunting but in a colorless way.

Susan Dodd will make your head spin with the two dissimilar voices she uses in The Mourner's Bench. One is a southern woman raised in modest circumstances; the other is a New England academic to the manor born. Past trauma drove William from Leandra, but now dying, he comes seeking her at her isolated cabin in North Carolina where she's a doll maker. Their reunion is awkward at first, but there's the delicious prospect that they might finally come to love each other at last.
More than the sum of its parts, The Mourner's Bench is a small book for women readers of all ages.

This book is a gem. The words literally call out to you to read them aloud. The two narratives flow together seamlessly, weaving in and out of the past as we learn bits and pieces of the story. The restraint Dodd uses to color the love affair is brilliant. As anyone who has ever lost someone--whether to love gone wrong or to death--knows the color of grief is mostly gray. To those reviewers that think this couple lack passion, I say that you weren't paying attention. This was passionate love in one of its purest forms. A deeply moving and wonderfully written book.

Leandra lives a quiet life in North Carolina working as a doll repairer. This plays a symbolic importance in the book, as Leandra gives the dolls new lives with restores clothes and pieces. As the book begins her terminally ill brother-in-law, Wim, pays a visit to Leandra in the hopes of spending his last days with her, his long-time love.

Ten years earlier, a very young Leandra was summoned to Massachusetts to help care for her beautiful, difficult and distant sister Pamela, who had fled their country background and re-fashioned herself as the sophisticated wife of Wim, a college professor many years her senior.

Pamela was cold and often cruel to both her husband and sister, and bitter about her pregnancy. Leandra and Wim were drawn together in the face of Pamela's rejection of them, and as the pregnancy came to a tragic end, the young Leandra found herself preoccupied with Wim, who paced the floor outside her room each night. Soon, Pamela's behavior became more and more irrational and violent, and while Wim and Leandra were out one night, she ended her life. The chasm of grief and shock was too difficult for either Wim or Leandra to cross and they separated, until the time of the novel's opening.

The novel is told from both Wim and Leandra's point of view, with Wim's sophisticated and intellectual and Leandra's quiet, wise, and spiritual. Ultimately it is Wim's illness and death that heals both of them.

This is a beautifully rendered and deeply touching story.

I enjoyed this book and recommend it. Perhaps the most memorable thing about it to me was how the story of the three main characters slowly unfolded. I kept wanting to find out more and more about them, so the book was a page-turner for me. The main love story was described in a rather reserved way, however, and seemed to lack passion. Nevertheless, it is an excellent book.

I was drawn to this book because the character Leandra repairs old dolls and I'm interested in old dolls. The dolls serve as a metaphor for Leandra's repairing of her and Wim's bodies and souls. Rarely have I read such meaningful prose about compassion and love, all kinds of love, and dying, from the point of view of Wim, and of Leandra, his caregiver. Friend Branch is an unforgettable character.

In some ways this reminded me of Cold Mountain but I had a much more enjoyable time reading it. The characters were real and realistic and the emotions were intricate as Wim and Leandra made peace with their past, pressent and future.

This novel quietly unfolds and wins the reader over with its beautiful prose and tender story. Susan Dodd uses restraint to tell a love story without being overly sentimental.