3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Charming, Ethereal, Palpable, Joy, December 1, 2006
This review is from: Rain Village (Hardcover)
"Rain Village" has a gypsy in its soul, filled with secrets, scents, thrills, chills and suspense, just like every circus should be! The narrator, tiny Tessa Riley, begins to tell her tale of being too small to do chores as a mere girl in a farming family in Kansas and meeting up with Mary Finn, a strange, mystical and almost magical woman that arrived on the scene and would serve as both a mentor and an icon to her.
The story unfolds like a paper flower in water, as the tale of who this woman is, how she is connected to this little girl and what lies ahead for little Tessa in that big world out there is the crux of the story.
The book plays out almost like a grown-up fable, with rich descriptions, evocative phrasing and very real people who just happen to be in a very unique business: the world of the Big Top.
Author Carolyn Turgeon provides a read that's as quick as a human cannonball and as light and lovely as the aerialists she describes. It is a wonderful tale that you'll wish went on at least a little longer.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"For people like you and me, the world is different", October 11, 2006
This review is from: Rain Village (Hardcover)
Twisting and curling and jumping high atop the Velasquez Circus big top, Tessa Riley has come along way from her sheltered life as the reticent girl growing up in the small town of Oakley in rural Kansas. Yet the vestiges of her old life still remain, steadily haunting her, and deep down she knows that she must reconcile her new world with the life of Mary Finn, her mentor and the woman who once inspired her.
As Rain Village opens, the sixteen-year-old Tessa is working on her parents' farm. The family comes from a long line of farmers, whose lives have been controlled by the seasons, but Tessa doesn't fit into this hardscrabble life of constantly digging and hauling crops. Desperately wishing for more, her longings are sparked by the arrival in town of Mary Finn, the new librarian, rumored to have a wild gypsy past and secret lovers who visit her after the library is closed.
Despite whisperings from the townsfolk and from her sister Geraldine that Mary makes everyone crazy, Tessa gets a job at the Library so she can get closer to this strange and mysterious woman. Whilst Tessa's mother brands Mary a jezebel and the library an unholy place and her abusive father bans books from the house, Tessa ignores them, giving herself over to the books "raging with life around her," and to Mary, seduced by her kindness, her beautiful words and stories, and her tarot cards, herbs and tea leaves.
Tessa soon leans that Mary was once a circus artist, who left this life she had loved so much to retire to this silent town, to quietly catalogue books. She also discovers that Mary once ran away from a place called Rain Village, leaving her mother, father sister and everything she'd known, after her lover William tragically drowned. Mary tells Tessa that she's not like the others around here and that there's a world a world larger than any of them could imagine out there, just waiting for her.
Determined to learn the art of the trapeze, Mary mentors Tessa, teaching her how to spin circles in the air, clean and sharp as a knife cut. She tells her "her body was born to fly." Undoubtedly, the girl has a natural talent, her body driven completely without barriers, and as fluid as water. "It was like flying - like having no weight around you, no bones, no skin like melting right into the air."
After sudden tragedy strikes, Tessa is forced to follow her dream of joining the circus, to find a world brighter and more wonderful than anything she could find in Oakley. Off to Kansas City Tessa goes, her life suspended between lives, between grief and freedom, the excitement of being out on her own and to be adventurous, free from the burdens of family and of love. Tessa takes to circus life like a fish takes to water, fascinated by this strange and wonderful new world she sees around her.
There's the man who can swallow ten swords and blow streams of fire from his mouth, the girl with the wings sprouting from her back, the pure white horses sparkling with rhinestones, the boom of the ringmasters voice, the grown of the Ferris wheel and the colorful banners, and the glare of lights turning the world inside out.
But it is the trapeze artists which most attract Tessa - the beautiful and exotic Lollie Ramirez and Carlos, Paulo, Jose and Mauro, the handsome and gentlemanly The Flying Ramirez Brothers who inspire Tessa to whirl around a white rope and cut cleanly through the air, moving around and around, unaffected by gravity and anything of this earth.
In perfectly considered prose, author Carolyn Turgeon pounds the reader with exacting images as Tessa's beautifully crafted journey is bought to life. Tessa does indeed fall into the life of the circus and even becomes one of the company's star attractions, but Mary's painful past emerges - and haunted by the images of William in the river pale and floating, "and the girl who cried so many tears" - Tessa finds herself facing many unanswered questions about her best friend's painful life.
Reassessing the past in the light of the present, Tessa gradually changes, maturing and growing, somewhat driven by blind faith and a hope and a longing that has made her demand more of the world than at first it wanted to give her. Part of Tessa's growth is that she realizes pretty soon that Mary has given her a beautiful gift, a striking talent and a language that can describe feeling and beauty, and perhaps even love.
Weaving together the inscrutable forces of memory, spirit, desire and regret and imbedding her narrative with magic and dream-like qualities, Turgeon has written an exquisite and quite moving account of one girl's search through history in an effort to fill the holes that nothing else can reach, to search for happiness and to hopefully discover the ultimate truths that mysteriously surround her dear best friend. Mike Leonard October 06.
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