Customer Reviews

She Was: A Novel

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A writer of extraordinary range, Janis Hallowell has followed up her lovely and mystical first novel - The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn - with She Was, a tale of personal politics that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. Doreen Woods leads the most apolitical life imaginable on a quiet street in Denver . She's married to the gentlest husband imaginable, has a perfectly nice son, and is a DENTIST, of all things. But it is a fabricated life, and the week in which Doreen's carefully constructed existence gets upended is the setting for She Was. Along the way, we visit wartime Viet Nam through the eyes of Doreen's ex-marine brother, and get a tour of the changes in our political landscape since the sixties. Back then, war was opposed vocally, dramatically, and sometimes violently. Now, as She Was subtly points out, an equally senseless war is being met with a great silence. In a sense, Doreen's quiet life is a metaphor for the lives of most left-leaning members of the middle class - politically, we've gone underground. Anyway, it's a great, fast, rollicking read. Janis Hallowell has delivered a second gem.

A well written book about the wars that we fight on a national, international and personal front. Seen through the lens of a protester whose actions led to the violence and death that she wanted to end, I did not come away from it feeling that the choices she made were held up to be applauded. War, be it in Vietnam, Iraq or in the streets of the USA, is never what what people think it will be and nobody comes through it unscathed. Having been actively involved in student protests during this time, it was easy for me to connect with not only Doreen, but with the complexity of issues and personalities presented in the book. (this is not to say that you "had to have been there" to appreciate the novel) I agree with another reviewer that the author's attempts to hit every social issue from immigration to gender discrimination was a tad overdone, but it did not detract from overall story.

This new novel by Janis Hallowell hauntingly redefines the concept of "broken family." A 60s radical goes underground, reinvents herself, and tries to live a normal if completely fraudulent life. Then a former co-conspirator finds her, and all hell breaks loose. Hallowell's true gift as a writer lies in her ability to create a character who can make you mad as hell but still garner your sympathy. We all make mistakes and do dumb things, but how many of us have to pay for the rest of our lives? Doreen's comfortable life is a house of cards just waiting to fall. And it's not just Doreen who'll feel the blow -- Hallowell's scenes showing Doreen with her husband and son are heartbreaking.

Of course, SHE WAS will really appeal to you if you happened to grow up during the sixties/seventies. (Got a high school reunion coming up?) But even if you didn't, SHE WAS stands by itself as a riveting and provocative read.

(Of course, now I'm anxious to go back and read Hallowell's first novel, THE ANNUNCIATION OF FRANCESCA DUNN - another treat, as I see from other reviews.)

Doreen Woods is a law-abiding citizen, community member, wife, mother, and a successful dentist with her own practice and an offshoot that provides dental care for people with minimal financial resources. Her son is grown, about to start college in the fall, and her marriage is at a good and solid place. Although her brother is suffering from AIDS-related MS, there is only one big thing keeping her from being completely content with her place on the earth.

Years ago, at the height of the Vietnam War, Doreen was an 18-year-old terrorist named Lucy Johansson, and is wanted by the FBI for killing a man during a Columbia University bombing manuever that went wrong. For over 30 years, she has moved quickly and quietly through her life without raising suspicions, but the sudden reappearance of an old comrade has her frightened for her life.

SHE WAS by Janis Hallowell is a first-rate thriller disguised as literary fiction. The ongoing chase, during which the present-day state of events in Doreen's life speed up and become more and more intense as the pages turn, has a feeling of complete and utter terror to it. Doreen is the hunted, and the fact that we've met her at a place where her life is happy and moving along without much outward care makes the disintegrating state of her affairs that much more volatile. Like Jason Bourne, she is moving as fast as she can to keep away from the past nipping angrily at her heels. But the faster she runs, the faster the past seems to catch up with her.

In a fury of activity over a few days, Doreen loses her father, admits her secret identity and past to her clueless husband and son, and causes a very dramatic turn in the dwindling life of her brother. Having helped her into hiding after the bombing, her brother is wanted as well, but it is his pain-addled body that is the most aggregious affront to his sensibilities. Neither of them care for the politics of old, and although they have lived through some politically hypocritical times (Adam, the brother, came of age in the gay '70s and '80s as well), their former selves are just that --- former. In post 9/11 America, however, terrorism is terrorism, and everybody is suspect, especially someone who participated in the radical movement so completely.

Hallowell writes with the pinched and efficient verbiage of a suspense hound. The flashbacks to Doreen's former life as a revolutionary and Adam's former life living with a Klaus Nomi-type gay club superstar, as well as his wrenching time spent in service in Vietnam, are poignant but informative --- a straightforward narrative that really does inform and build the characters as we read. You can almost see them like a 4-D computer graphic --- one side is clear, then another, until there is a multidimensional human being beamed into your head as you read. Hallowell manages to put just enough historical context into the book so that younger readers who may not remember these types of inciting incidents, like the Columbia uprising or the Vietnam War, will still feel the sting of the violence, political vitriol and community clashing that comes in wartime (much like today).

It is particularly remarkable that, with such heated backdrops, Hallowell is able to reign herself in and not go overboard in comparing the guerilla tactics of police during the '60s and '70s with the incendiary and insidious tactics of today's conservative government. Reading about incidents like a Berkley rally and a trip through Alabama during the Woolworth sit-ins in the '60s, we see, through Doreen's and Adam's eyes, the kind of violent behavior that sparked the sort of radical activity that Doreen found herself involved in. Through her son, Hallowell gets in some appropriate punches for the current paranoid sweep of young men and women of color and different cultures that 9/11 has wrought upon our civilization.

SHE WAS is a great book --- written with restrained intensity and emotional vibrancy, with a respect for the past and a thinly-but-nicely veiled warning to all of us that the past is always with us and the future is nothing without it.

--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

I love Janis Hallowell's new novel, She Was. It's a magnetic story about a dentist named Doreen Woods who lives a quiet life in Denver, Colorado, devoted to her husband, teenaged son, and dying brother, a Vietnam vet. In spite of all the examples we are provided with about Doreen's caring and thoughtful way of life, we feel uneasy: Doreen seems prickly, anxious, uncomfortable. Why? Well, she has a secret. Her life is completely fabricated, an identity created after an violent act of Vietnam war protest over 30 years ago goes fatally wrong. Left hanging by her co-conspirators, Lucy Johansson escapes into her new identity as Doreen Woods, starting over with her brother Adam and making a new life for herself that even her husband and son will know nothing about. This life unravels as a comrade from the past shows up to trade Doreen to the Feds in exchange for her own husband's freedom. Doreen's portrait and those of her family are drawn beautifully by Hallowell's sure hands, and as the week unfolds, complexity blurs the lines between right and wrong. Could a loving family accept sudden revelation of a hidden identity? If a person lives with the horrors of war, do they ever really go away? If a single defining act in one's life ends horribly, can a person ever atone? I kept thinking I knew how I would react, what I would do, but the truth is, I don't know. The beauty of She Was allows those questions to surface along with the gripping story surrounding them.

Janis Hallowell's second book is a true pageturner. Doreen Woods's past is about to become her future. One of best characters in the book is Doreen's gay brother Adam.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a well-written novel that cast a clear eye on our recent history, and the role it plays in our lives today.

EXCELLENT READ

This was a thoroughly enjoyable novel. Janis Hollowell has a talent for developing characters that you want to follow. There are enough reveiws that just give you a summary of the plot, so I wont' go there. What I will say is that I found myself wanting to read far past my bedtime, waiting to see what new development would occur with the characters, and more importantly, how they would deal with it. I don't normally read a novel more than once, but I've read this one 3 times.

Janis Hallowell's amazing novel SHE WAS lifts off in the first few lines, and soars the deeper one gets into it. Although it takes its initial charge from a young woman's bombing of an ROTC building to protest the war in Vietnam, this is a novel with profound relevance to the present day and political climate. The book draws parallels between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, but its deepest resonance lies in the emotional devastation wreaked on the characters. The activist turned dentist Doreen Woods, her husband Miles, and teenaged son Ian come alive as people I cared about deeply, in their attachments to each other, their love and loss. Doreen pays a heavy price for the political sins of those in power; she's at once our cultural conscience and the one who atones. Doreen's brother Adam, wracked with the pain of MS, bears this cultural pain in his body in an increasingly redemptive way. The significance of the translucent wings on the book's cover emerged as the story unfolded with exquisite suspense.
One person's pain is interwoven with the others', in alternating chapters that allow each of the main characters his or her voice. This unfolding net of pain would be unbearable were it not for Hallowell's talent, affection for her characters, and commitment to justice in the deepest sense of the word. In SHE WAS, Janis Hallowell has given us the gift of a dizzying look into our collective shadow. She's a terrific storyteller, offering a truth that left me in tears.