Customer Reviews

Things Unspoken

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Not that the parents depicted in this story are bad people -- this is not a story of abuse, but rather a story of parental ineptitude. The amazing thing about it -- and this is amazing when it occurs in 'real life' as well -- is the resilience of the children involved, how they wind up reaching down within themselves to draw upon their common sense and inner strength in order to carry on.

The story is set in the early to mid 1950s in Los Angeles -- a simpler, more naive time, when the air was still clean enough not to send the residents into coughing fits. The MacKinnon family is made up of three children -- the narrator, Jorie, has two older brothers -- and a set of parents that apparently haven't a clue about raising children. I suppose we should give the mother the benefit of the doubt -- she dies of polio very early in the book, and she was evidently the glue that held everything together. With her gone, the father is about as hapless as they come. He's not stupid -- he's a respected doctor with several Hollywood luminaries among his patients -- but his ideas about letting his children learn from their mistakes and finding their own way, instead of offering them guidance, leads to one disaster after another.

More than a lack of guidance, it is Dr. MacKinnon's inability to express love to his children that hurts them the most, although Jorie seems to be the only one to admit it. There were times I felt that he completely lacked the ability to grasp the concept of love -- he repeatedly calls it an 'overused' word. His ideas of gender roles -- typical of the 50s, and, sadly, still in evidence today -- are stifling as well. He dumps every single household chore onto Jorie's shoulders -- 'women's work' he calls it, beneath the dignity of the 'men' of the house.

The author has chosen the perfect narrator in Jorie -- her outlook and views are the most stable of the household. As she watches her family disintegrate around her, she makes some very valid, poignant observations -- and she becomes more and more determined that there will be love in her life, that she will take the reins and be her own guide. Her determination and courage are inspiring -- and the voice given her by Ms. Sheen in a compelling and authentic one, never leeving me with the feeling that an adult was telling the story through the mouth of a child.

I love finding books like this. Things Unspoken is storytelling at it's best, simple and beautifully written. The story of three motherless children left to essentially fend for themselves while their physician father pursues his career and his 'things unspoken", is both heartbreaking and uplifting. Set in the 1950's and 60's, Jorie and her brothers experience a strange life, removed of friends and family, their closest mother figure an alcoholic housekeeper who eventually like the others must be sent away. Desperate for the approval and affection of their distant (and in today's perspective), negligent father, each child must find their own way to deal with the hand they have been dealt. This novel could have been weepy and melodramatic, but it is neither. The author does not pursue the "dysfunction of the week" route, she tells us the story and allows the reader to watch what unfolds. This is a superb novel. There is a reason the reviewers are all giving it 5 stars. Read it now!

Anitra Sheen's "Things Unspoken" beautifully explains and portrays the range of human emotions and adaptive behaviors of children and adults in their individual "family" settings. In a read I found hard to put down from beginnning to end, I was fascinated by the characters "decision making" as their lives progressed.

For those New Yorkers and everyone cpativated by "Angela's Ashes", "Things Unspoken" is a must read!! You will laugh, cry, be shocked, but most all be inspired by the resilency of the human spirit in both children and adults. You constantly watch the struggle of good and evil being played out based on the life decisions people make! I applaud Jorie in the end--for making a truly difficult and correct "life" decision. She could take the easy way out--but doesn't and the reader knows her life will be better for it.

Ms. Sheen is a great storyteller and I anxiously await her next book.

This was a book I finished in one day. Very Good! It is a coming of age sort of novel narrated by a young girl, Jorie. Jorie and her two brothers lost their mother when they were very young and raised by their father, a doctor. This was back in the 1950's when life was different, people saw things differently. The father neglected them terribly and they basically raised themselves.

These three children struggle with themselves and trying to understand their father. It is a sad story yet it is one of survival and how one can truly survive unthinkable things in their life.

Anrita Sheen presents a cleareyed and unselfpitying narrativeof a family in which the children--including the indelible characterof the narrator, Jorie MacKennon--are effectively left to raise themselves. In the wake of their Mother's death, their physician father provides the children with a breadth of freedom which operates both to distort thier childhood while allowing an eccentric opportunity for their self-realization. As the book progresses, and the narrator matures, a looming sense of impending disaster accellerates the narrative thrust. The author avoids every cliche, creating a sense of arresting immediacy. Furthermore, the subtle intelligence of the writing perfectly captures the worldview of a child while providing the simultaneous resonance of the mature woman's hardwon forgiveness. This is a piece of genuinely literary fiction that I would recommend to anyone.

Aptly named, "Things Unspoken," Anitra Sheen's compelling, enraging and forceful debut novel, examines the consequences of living in a family seemingly without the affirmation of love or belonging. Written with a powerful voice and tempered by an adult perspective, the novel traces the childhood and early adolescence of Jorie Mackinnon, the admirable protagonist who must not only bear the burden of losing her mother to polio when Jorie ws but four years old, but the even more onerous task of living with a distant, imperious father and two older brothers, both of whom respond to the scars of their mother's death in different manners. This is a vexing novel, in which the reader is torn between admiration for Jorie's resolve, integrity and (borrowing from a phrase of the secretive underworld figure, The Boss) "moxie," and outright disgust at her father, a brilliant doctor whose indifference to his own children is masked behind a facade of believing that children growing up independently of their parents is the best way to rear children.

Indeed, "Things Unspoken" is the code phrase for this family's operating principles; uncomfortable or unsettling ideas or events simply aren't talked about. They are talked around or ignored, and the hurts, confusions and dislocations caused by this willed silence seemingly disappear, only to reasser themselves in the destructive behaviors manifested in each of the family members. Jorie, especially, yearns for verbal interaction and reassurance, for a sense of belonging and love. Even after her father suffers a heart attack, Jorie remains silent. "There were so many things I wanted to ask about, things that had always run through our lives in a river of silence -- my mother, his [first] Chinese wife, his other women, his other children, the connections we didn't know about, the friends we never saw -- but I didn't dare."

Ms. Sheen boldly adds her voice to a growing national dialogue of what a family is and how a family should function. Even though "Things Unspoken" is set in Los Angeles during the 1950s, a relatively innocent time in our national experience, the novel has a distinctly contemporary tone. The three children, deliberately (cruelly?) left to their own devices, mirror latch-key kids today. The father's distinctive laissez-faire attitude toward children (justified by his own isoltive childhood in a remote Candian prairie) harmonizes with the harried and stressed-out lives of the affluent technocrats of the 1990s. When Jorie's father proclaims, "I've taken care of my responsibilities. My life is my own and it's not for you to judge me. I've never imposed my authority on you. I've given you the freedom of your own life, so you should understand," he proudly affirms parentage by absence, paternal responsibility by invisibility and independence through indifference. This type of parental abdication, dressed up as letting your children find their own way, infuriated me as I read the novel, but it also caused me to hope that the children would find their way, scarred, frightened and silent though they may have been.

Thus, "Things Unspoken" is a rare novel. It combines a wonderful protagonist confronting some of the most cruel and daunting adversaries imaginable: a father who is indifferent and a family which is only hanging together by a thread. It is a gritty, harrowing and troubling story, one which leaves the reader impressed both with the author's storytelling ability and consumed with the central questions examined.

I hope Anitra Sheen will write a sequel to this moving book. This is one of the best books I have ever read.

Jorie, the only female growing up in a motherless household, is telling this story and reflecting back on her childhood. Her mother dies when Jorie and her 2 brothers are very young to be cared for by a father who is a very busy family physician, never knowing when he'll get to go home or when he might be called out for an emergency or child birth. He's a father that in my opinion is rather selfish at times, putting his life first mainly through his profession. There's no hugs and kisses passed around as well as very fe, if any, compliments to the children. The children grow up with a wide range of housekeepers/caretakers with some pretty sad treatment from some resulting with bruises and dangerous rides in cars as well as the boys being tied up to their bed posts or put in closets.
This is an incredibule book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Every page was interesting. There's only one other book, White Oleander, I ever read that is similar in the respect of very young children fighting all odds and being survivors who use their upbringing in the "school-of-hard-knocks" to their advantage in adulthood.
In a nutshell, this is a story of a single parent doing the best job he knew how to do. He's a good father and provider but he's not a good "mother" at all. He leaves a lot of emotions unspoken as well as no "motherly" advice.
GREAT BOOK.......Read it, you won't be disappointed.

Unspoken Things is a kind of "lest we forget" novel that should be read by all young women, parents, would be parents, formerly young women and men of all ages. We all have in common a need to have our consciousness raised as to the needs of children and adults for love and approval, the painful consequences of total control by a parent or loved one and the damage inflicted by drug use. All this and more is accomplished in Sheen's book that centers on Jorie, a sensitive survivor looking back through her slightly smoky glasses of adulthood to and through the universal period of growing up - though a very rough one it is in this novel. Painfully moving in parts and thoroughly hilarious in others, Sheen, the wordsmith, gives us a good read. When you finish this novel, you might find that you are humming to yourself "Tutti-frutti! All rutti!". That will set the time of this novel and leave you with a feeling of hope and the desire to keep on trucking - just like Jorie. This is truly an inspirational book.

A well written, fast paced and fascinating book. One of the best reads I've found in a long time. The writing style reminded me of Dani Shapiro's (especially Slow Motion): very descriptive, highly intense and totally unflinching.