Customer Reviews

Salvage

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A difficult mother-daughter relationship lies at the heart of Salvage, a novel that absolutely brims with some of the most devastating imagery: "the vague rush of a deep seashell held against my skull, hovering in the coils of my eardrums like fever; the slap-happy sun revealed in the wanton lushness of peony and rose," the prose deeply reflective of a tale where memories and the present collide.

In a ramshackle house in Virginia, after fifteen years away from the area, one woman tries to make peace with all of the demons of her childhood. As a ten-year-old girl, the narrator's mother, Lois, proved to be a difficult woman at best. Possessed of a fierce personality and prone to bouts of brutal melancholy, Lois was once pregnant, and then the next day, suddenly wasn't anymore.

Basically left alone with her step father Charles, mild, mustachioed and in retrospect, deeply depressed, our young narrator's home life plays out against the Iranian Hostage Crisis, Peter Jennings on the news and Jimmy Carter in the Whitehouse. Eventually collapsing into herself, Lois hides in her room for fifteen days with only a hot water bottle for company, her mortality now some sort of obscene presence in the house as her daughter tries to cope with her mother's absence.

For days on end, Lois manages to carve herself a niche among the bereaved, while our narrator names her dead sister Nancy and begins to talk to her in the privacy of her closet, a conversation that lasts for eleven years. There was no way of knowing whether Nancy was a real girl, but certainly throughout the course of this novel, our narrator becomes engaged in a slow motion battle with who we might have been in a world of Lois's denials and evasions.

There's a part of her that wants to set the record straight, that life is not what it seems. So begins the sad and somewhat melancholic vigil of this young woman who is possessed of a mother whom she knows instinctively was never there, while also resorts to bitter rants to Nancy in the closet, intent to tell her about her unjust and foolish world.

But it an incident in New York, which truly proves to be a turning point and the incident/accident, ends up shaking her confidence to the very core. And it is this catastrophe that causes her to leave Manhattan for a" cold river green" house in Virginia with its lavish reckless back yard, the property coming to a halt at a thick cluster of hemlock trees and a dilapidated gazebo standing just off to the side.

This book is most notable for the author's ability to create truly astonishing images, as she dazzles our senses with the sights, sounds and smells of our narrator and her mother's troubling conversations with saints that no one but she can see. Later in the novel a sweet and kindly neighbor enters into the fray, her uncomplicated wisdom and friendly banter adding a measure of temerity and also a welcome reprieve from the complications of Lois and her younger suitors.

Although light on actual plot, Kotapish uses her dexterous prose to show how a single life is subject to myriad interpretations. In the end, this book strives to present the inner life of one woman's heart and the sometimes difficult and fraught relationship that she's had with her mother. Mike Leonard March 2008.

Reading Salvage, by JF Kotapish, is a bit like spending a rainy Sunday afternoon at the art museum, contemplating impressionist paintings, rather than going to the movies. At the museum, standing close enough to the painting to make the drowsy guard snap to attention, the picture looks blurry, like when you slightly cross your eyes or let them drift in a day trance, but up close the tiny pieces of workmanship that the painter used to tell his story are sharply in focus, such as brushstrokes and ever so slight changes of color. Standing back, from across the silent, paneled room, the painting is whole and clear, a beautiful analog to life.

The workmanship of Salvage -- the tangible, vivid and poetic descriptions of place and people, the crafty banter between friends, the processes of the subconscious hidden beneath the visual surface we observe of ourselves and the people around us -- is a delight for the critical reader. While the bizarre seminal event that stirs the subconscious of the main character -- not an accident, an incident -- jars the reader like a shove from behind, the tale in Salvage is largely not moved forward by plot but rather by the healing of the main character. If you secretly video-taped the bi-monthly psychoanalysis consulting sessions of a patient with traumatic stress disorder, then edited them down to just the patient's revelations, epiphanies, and milestones of mental health, that would be Salvage. It is a literary work about the human psyche, filial love, and the inseparable weaving of the two that forms the kernel in every one of us.

Some authors are magicians with words, casting spells that leave readers almost lovesick. In Salvage, I fell in love with Kotapish's stylish, lyrical phrasing and imagery. Take, for example, this description of roses on a fence: "... the roses have completed a magnificent bloom and linger like drunk women at the end of a party, voluptuous past repair, faded, sick with their own perfume." The book's plot weaves like a stage whisper throughout the novel -- the character's first-person musings and point of view reveal much more than any action, and the main theme of the novel emerges as a loose, lyrical, haunting thread that reticulates her emotional quest: the redemption of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship. The unnamed main character moves to Virginia to recover from witnessing a tragic accident in New York, rekindling her relationship with her often emotionally vacant parent. We see everyone and everything through this main character's eyes and emotions, with fragmented, unclear revelations of what actually happened or what is going on; for example, she frequently converses with the spirit of a stillborn sister in a closet, a puzzling derangement that reveals the extent of the character's fragile mental state. In contrast, she enjoys happy rapport with a neighbor, Edith, who is the "normal" antithesis to her own injured persona. The main character explores herself and her mother through a ruthless, probing lens, yet her descriptions remain richly sensitive, expressive, endearing, and enlightened. "Time brings a terrible revealing light to the murk. In the happy ignorance of the moment, things are what they are... Shame arrives later, a rude guest stomping in during dessert with no explanation, dripping weather onto the carpet." This is Jane Kotapish's first novel, and as an entranced reader, I consider myself a new fan.

For starters, I should say that this is my first review and that I am in no way qualified to review anything. This is just my 2 cents worth on a book I really enjoyed.

In Salvage, Jane Kotapish did a good job of taking me beyond any stereotypes I might try to assign to her book. It really got down to a human scale where I could relate to the characters. I could also relate to the story as a whole, and I think the book handles a person's internal reality versus society's mass external reality in an interesting way......Basically, a person's perception of the world collides with reality. Or in this case, is almost overwhelmed by it. All of the characters represent this theme in unique ways but together they make the book very cohesive.

So I have made it clear that I am a fan of the book, though I am a little biased for two reasons - One, as I hinted above, there is a metaphysical vein that runs through this book and I am sucker for that. But this book doesn't get too syrupy. The story is grounded in reality and there are times when the characters actions actually make you uncomfortable. The story never seems contrived, and I'd say that if you have ever had something happen in your life, which you didn't know how to cope with, then I think you will find the story very compelling.

The second reason I am biased is that I met Jane once many years ago. It was a brief conversation but it made an impression on me because she was so comfortable with herself and seemed so sure about what she was going to do with her life. We got on the topic of Joyce and she said then that she was interested in writing. Many of my friends at that time wanted to be writers, painters, musicians or something of the sort, but she is the only person I know of who actually went out and did it.

Pushing those two reasons aside, the book is simply a good read and I highly recommend it. I am now officially a fan of her work and I am looking forward to her next book.

One of the more pleasurable reading experiences I've had recently.

I particularly appreciate the innovative use of language. The simple but shockingly fresh ways she combines a noun and an adjective to create a precise and totally appropriate picture, but in a way that I've never heard (or thought of) before.

The overall effect created a very intimate relationship with the main character. It was almost creepy at times (and this is a good thing) to be let in to the internal world of this very off-balance person. Like I got to know her in ways that I wasn't totally comfortable with. I think to be able to achieve that is pretty special. How many characters are there in literature who we feel both drawn to and repulsed by and also feel like we've gotten to know very well?

"I have always watched myself watching myself. And so I know that what I am doing is flirting with the possibility of going mad.... And I see that what I am doing is sad and pathetic and symptomatic of a pathological loneliness. And I also see that I am fine. I am as close to happy as I have ever been." This short passage, from the point of view of the unnamed narrator of Jane Kotapish's SALVAGE, illustrates perfectly the contradictions and tensions that are at the heart of this challenging but thought-provoking debut novel.

On the surface of things, the narrator, a woman in her late 30s, has achieved a comfortable, even enviable, life. Living for many years in Manhattan, where she explored and embraced the city with enthusiasm even as she achieved considerable career success, she would seem to be a well-adjusted, successful person.

Now, though, as she returns to rural Virginia in the wake of witnessing a grim tragedy, the protagonist reveals, by narrating her life from the time of her childhood, that she has always been "flirting with the possibility of going mad." Raised by her fiercely independent, somewhat prickly single mother, Lois, the narrator longed for affection as a child. Instead, she conjured up the ghost of her younger sister, lost during a miscarriage, a specter of anger and hostility who haunted the narrator throughout her childhood and adolescence, threatening to do harm to herself and her surroundings.

Now, though, as the narrator drifts around her overly large, ramshackle Victorian house and garden in the wake of her New York tragedy, she questions not only her current and past sanity but also her mother's state of mind. Lois, who lives nearby, has claimed to be in the company of saints, from a veterinarian who bears a great resemblance to St. Francis to a cardio funk classmate who may just be the disciple Jesus loved. Perplexed by this turn of behavior in her mother (a woman who re-christened an inherited statue of the Virgin Mary after Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt) and facing the loss of her childhood home, the narrator must confront demons past and present before she can salvage her own sanity --- and her life.

Kotapish's first novel is evocative and fluid, much like the narrator's consciousness. Moving freely between past and present, the narrative invites readers to make connections between the narrator's childhood experiences and her current state of mind. The book is also an extended exploration of the ongoing repercussions of the mother-daughter relationship in women's lives, even far beyond childhood. With a near stream-of-consciousness feel and a deliberately ambiguous (albeit hopeful) conclusion, SALVAGE may not be for every reader; for those willing to enter into the narrator's convoluted consciousness, however, it may just be a revelation.

From the opening paragraph to the enlightened ending, Salvage melts in your mouth like a decadent dessert. Sad, silly, surprising, surreal.... yet oh so real, Salvage must be indulged to be appreciated. Kotapish is a new voice on the literary scene to keep an eye on. We haven't heard the last from her! PS: I rated this book FIVE stars, not four!