Customer Reviews

Thirty-three Swoons: A Novel

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Thirty-Three Swoons is a tightly constructed novel, but perhaps a little more space would have allowed Cooley's book to breathe. The narrative centers around Camilla Archer, a woman whose life has been put on hold by complicated relationships in life and death with her father, Jordan, and cousin, Eve. When the dream figures of Russian theater director Meyerhold and his mysterious doppelganger begin to manipulate her dreams and intrude on her decisions, she is brought into conflict with Eve's angry daughter Danny.

Cooley has a careful technique. She interweaves the lives of Camilla, Jordan, and Meyerhold in distinctive worlds, evoking the mysterious quality of perfumes and the theater, and making ties with them to memory and love. At times she has a lovely classical restraint to her prose, especially in descriptions that morph into themes: "And with the `orientals' - opulent scents such as amber and vetiver - Jordan created fragrances that were provocative without ever resorting to vulgarity...I think of Jordan's perfumes as secret passwords each wearer decoded on her own."

Yet Camilla's quest never grabs hold of your heart and pulls you along with it. The novel's basic conflict between children and parents is an old and tricky one, and Camilla's pent-up character gives little away. Less dialogue and description about the shop or what someone is wearing, and more about Camilla's emotional history with the people she loves would have strengthened the New York characters and Camilla's dilemma. Cooley's prose is powerful - sometimes it just needs to let loose and enjoy all the possibilities she has created for it.

As a translator of the author's truly wonderful first novel "The Archivist" into the Estonian I was thrilled when the publisher of the translation presented me with Martha Cooley's next work. However, from the start of the omniscient doppelganger's monologue in the first chapter I was struck by the artificiality of its tone and puzzled by the purpose of including the Vsevolod Meyerhold parts in the overall composition. It feels over constructed and the alien voice inserted in the interludes disrupts rather helps to make the tale a polyphonic one as probably intended. The connection to Russia's Stalinist past and its victims is strained and hardly justified from the point of view of the rest of the story, which in itself is masterfully told. The best episode on this plane is Stuart's make-up séance with Camilla who, on seeing her transformed image in the mirror, is shaken into better understanding of her father ("A man of feeling, fully alone.") The descriptions of Jordan's perfumes also constitute some of the best parts of the book. Still under the spell of "The Archivist" I wish the author luck in her future endeavors despite my criticism.

In very different ways, I found Thirty-Three Swoons as satisfying as The Archivist, Cooley's excellent first novel. The structure is more complex and inventive, with a variety of voices - dream narratives, soliloquies, and traditional narrative - sustaining that curiosity - and frustration at unresolved tension - that propels the reader forward. I see this difference between the two novels as evidence of the writer's sensitivity to the need for different languages and structures to fit different subject matters. I also found the olfactory thread that runs through the book very fresh and a nostril-opener. The strands come together in a satisfying and unpredictable way, and the prose is often beautifully turned. How lucky can a reader get?

Martha Cooley is a great young writer. Those readers expecting "The Archivist, Pt. 2" will be in for a surprise. She takes us for a Russian sleigh-ride through modern relationships, as carefully composed as the overtones of scent that rise from the page. It is an elegant production; well-presented and seductive.

The perfume industry and theater make interesting backdrops to this haunting story. The heroine, whose parents are deceased dreams of her father as the business of living comes much too fast. An unforgettable novel.

Janet Sue Terry, author of the "Set Me Free" series, book 1 - "Possibilities", book 2 - Resolutions, and "Just Our Best Short Stories 2005". www.janetsueterry.com. CEO of Just My Best Book Publishing Company, www.jmbpub.com