Customer Reviews

Undressing the Moon

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With one of the most frightening events that a person can face, Piper Kincaid is only thirty-years-old when she feels a lump in her breast and learns that she has cancer.

Her best friend, Becca, has been staying with her to provide care. However, as the story unfolds, Piper is weak from the effects of the disease and has decided to stop her chemotherapy.

Piper's mother had been a free spirit and worked artistically with glass objects. The family managed to eek out an existence based on Piper's father's income. However, he lost his job when the furniture factory closed. He managed to get a seasonal job at a landfill in his Vermont town but his pride and ambition were broken.

After a time, Piper's mother began to live in an imaginary world where everyting would turn out right. Piper had a feeling of what was coming and one day when Piper was only fourteen-years-old, her mother disappeared.

Piper's father stopped going to work and spent his time searching for his wife but then gave up and found someone new. Then, he moved in with his new friend.

With the loss of her parents, Piper's brother, Quinn is appointed her guardian. Piper remained philosophical and hopeful. She relates that she dreamed of having a husband "...and the way an infant might feel like a small bird lying on my chest."

This is a story of lonliness, despair and hope that captures the reader's heart as we are drawn into Piper's life and find ourselves saying a prayer for her.

The novel is wonderfully written. The reader experiences the emotional trama of a young woman who learns that her life may be ending before it has a chance to begin.

Can a story this sad be entertaining? T. Greenwood has demonstrated in this novel, that it can.

I went to the library and found this unassuming little book perched among the new releases...sounded good, took it home, opened it up and WOW!!! What a pleasant surprise...this is a very charismatic story...one of those rare books I could not put down...it's actually a pretty simple story of a woman with a terminal disease who reflects upon the circumstances of her life with lovely allegories of colors and glass and simple symbols. I highly recommend this uncomplicated yet poetic novel........

Thirty-year old Piper Kincaid faces terminal breast cancer in the care of her loving, life-long friend, Becca. The story alternates seamlessly between the present and Piper at age 14, the year her mother left the family and Piper entered into a relationship with a much older man. Color, glass, and the realignment of broken things are dominant metaphors in this novel. Greenwood's language is beautiful, and the story flows like a river, from longing to loss to forgiveness. I'm sorry I didn't discover this magnificent voice sooner, and am now reading "Nearer Than the Sky."

I must begin by saying that I have the utmost respect for T. Greenwood as an author. "Breathing Water" and "Nearer than the Sky" are two truly remarkable novels. This novel too held much promise, but upon completion I came away feeling rather unsatisfied. The world of Piper Kincaid is not a happy one. A thrity year old woman dying of breast cancer, she begins to reflect upon the traumatic events of her adolescence. Her seemingly loving mother abandons the family, forcing Piper and her brother to fend for themselves while their disinterested father persues his "life" elsewhere. Seeking affection and approval, Piper reaches out to a teacher with disastarous results. In her dying days, Piper thoughts are full of both her mother and the teacher, sorrow and regret. While the author touches on some type of resolution for Piper, I felt another few chapters were necessary to leave the reader with a better sense of closure on Piper's inevitable death. Ultimately, perhaps the story tells us that although life may afford us the opportunity to attempt resolution, death may not be so generous.

I have read and LOVED all of T. Greenwood's books, but this one especially touched my heart. I picked it up and couldn't put it down! I was instantly drawn into this lovely, haunting, beautiful story of a young woman struggling with cancer and reflecting back on the events surrounding the loss of her mother. Please read this book! I can't wait for T. Greenwood's next novel, she is an amazing writer!!

I have been an ardent admirer of T. Greenwood since her first novel. She adorns her pages with such beautiful imaginary, that the effect is often stunning. Perhaps Greenwood's greatest gift to her readers is the ability to clearly draw the hidden parameters of the heart, with such phrasing as: "Hope is really just desire disguised, just desperation, aching, dressed up like a prayer." As well, her character descriptions are incisive: "Her eyes were set far apart, and her face looked like an old glove".

Undressing the Moon has an ambitious plot for its length. There are traumatic upheavals in the life of 14-year-old Piper's life: abandonment, rape, catastrophic illness, all of which the author allows to drift into natural, rather than forced, conclusions. I tried to like Mr. Hammond, Piper's bereft teacher-mentor, but couldn't ignore his responsibility for his actions, finding myself far less understanding than Piper. Also, Piper's father with his considerable personal flaws and random wretched girlfriends, seemed an unnecessary complication. Ultimately, 30-year-old Piper, facing the ravages of breast cancer, pens a powerful tribute to her childhood friend, Becca, who steps in to fill all the empty spaces left by premature emotional loss.

I have come to expect disciplined, sensitive novels from Greenwood. I suspect Undressing the Moon is an earlier effort, before the author found her clear, pure voice. I hope this young writer will redefine her focus in the next novel, because she possesses prodigious talent.

This is the story of a woman, Piper Kincaid, suffering from cancer as a woman of 30, and reflecting back on her adolescence. During adolescence Piper is deserted by both parents. Greenwood creates beautiful, meaningful images; at other times she utilizes a very simple style without being dull. The book is interesting and affecting, and the main character well developed. I think there was one plot element too many: I was furious at Greenwood toward the end, for an unnecessary, demeaning, and melodramatic plot twist. The secondary characters are neither well developed, well motivated, nor very interesting. At the same time, scenes with Piper's mother looking for "treasures", and with a friend supporting her during her illness, are both very effective, in very different ways. The scenes with her mother are poetic, almost spiritual. The scenes with her friend are heartwarming without being sentimental.

Nobody writes like this. No one can capture what T. Greenwood captures in all that she creates. Her third novel, Undressing The Moon, is as stunning if not more beautiful and heartwrenching than her previous two.

Undressing The Moon is told through Piper, both in her youth struggling with life, and in her present day adulthood. At fourteen, her mother left. In present day, she is dying of breast cancer. There is beautiful imagery that surrounds glass and colors throughout the entire book, and the mending of such things. This book breaks your heart too, and instead of mending it completely, it leaves a piece missing so that you'll always remember this story. But stories like this are impossible to forget anyway.

Read all of her books, you will not be disappointed. There are many things to experience, learn and taste in her stories. Nobody writes like T. Greenwood, nobody.

I bless the day I discovered T. Greenwood, a writer who has such depth that her words flow from the pages into my soul, touching me with their beauty. I love her references to color in this book, reflecting back to the memories of Piper's mother who deserted her at a critical time in her life. Piper has been hurt by everyone who ever loved her with the exception of her brother Quinn and her best friend Becca, both of whom come back into her life as she comes closer to its end. Read this book if you care about people's feelings. Read this book if you love words which join together like the stitches of an afghan as they create a story which you're sure was written just for you. If you haven't read anything else by T. Greenwood, you will after reading UNDRESSING THE MOON. And if you have read BREATHING WATER & NEARER THE SKY you will not be disappointed with this one either.

I cannot get this story and these characters out of my mind--I still think about them, days after I finished the book. It is the story of Piper at thirty diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer and as a teenager, and it shows the force her mother's absence brings to bear througout her throughout Piper's life. Piper stumbles through school, attracting the attention of an older man, and this is where a lesser writer would have faltered, but there is not a false note in the writing. Greenwood uses touching prose and imagery, going back and forth in time and it never feels jarring. It just flows beautifully. I am so glad I discovered T. Greenwood and I recommend this book highly.