Above the Thunder (Hardcover)

~ Renee Manfredi (Author)
Key Phrases: Baby Jesus, Flynn Anna, Jack Stuart (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Manfredi charts the disappointments and surprises of the human heart in her stunning debut novel, a complex ensemble character study that revolves around Anna Brinkman, a widowed, 50-ish Boston medical technologist and academic. Anna's busy life is transformed when her estranged daughter-an erratic heroin addict-calls from Alaska and asks to pay an extended visit. Brinkman is already struggling with her responsibilities as a mentor for a support group of AIDS patients, but she becomes totally overwhelmed when her daughter's husband arrives alone and asks Anna to help him raise the couple's wildly imaginative but troubled 10-year-old daughter, Flynn. In a parallel subplot, Anna forges an unlikely friendship with a hostile HIV-positive patient named Jack, who has betrayed his longtime lover, Stuart, by giving in to his wide-ranging erotic appetites with other men. The literary glue that holds this disparate ensemble together is the remarkable Flynn, who loves boxing and Irish dancing, believes in reincarnation and hears spirit voices. She quickly becomes "the dark heart of the nucleus in the cell of Anna's life" and captures Jack's heart in the process, so much so that Anna ends up moving to Maine with them both to form a unique family that eventually includes one of the other characters. To describe the novel as a brilliant, issue-oriented drama shortchanges Manfredi's accomplishments; the medical writing recalls the early works of Ethan Canin, and the combination of smooth storytelling, compassionate and probing narration and imaginative plotting makes for a heady blend, despite a difficult, tragic ending.
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From Booklist

Fiftyish widow Anna is bitter and bitterly estranged from her only daughter, Poppy. A college teacher of medical technology, she is a would-be doctor who turned med tech to support her husband through med school, then saw her dreams dissolve when she became pregnant. Decades have passed, and 12 years since she has heard from Poppy, now married and a mother herself. Further back, Poppy returned from Europe with a shorn head and full-blown heroin addiction, then ran off with an itinerant artist and subsequently failed to visit her father's deathbed. Now Anna hears from Poppy and her family at long last, only to wind up juggling her emotions over supervising a support group for HIV patients and hosting her son-in-law and grandson while Poppy takes off again. In this moving, engrossing family drama about journeys taken willingly and, for the most part, not, relatives' and acquaintances' lives intersect, and tests of family loyalties and friendships spur growth and insight. Meanwhile, Manfredi handles each character confidently and credibly. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 334 pages
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage (January 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931561591
• ISBN-13: 978-1931561594
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,563,057 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The infinite faces of love, December 24, 2003

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This unusual novel has a quiet power in the telling and speaks to the nature of loss, as well as creating the loving relationships that sustain us. Love comes into our lives in many disguises, not all of them predictable. The trick is not to overlook those precious opportunities and nurturing connections, in whatever form they appear. Above the Thunder chronicles the friendship of a divergent group of people who meet, form a family and then, inevitably, move on, but permanently alter each other's lives, transcending time and place.

Anna Brinkman has created a simple world for herself, centered around work and a few friends since she lost her husband. The couple have a daughter, Poppy, who left home years before and failed to return in time for her father's death. Suddenly, a phone call interrupts the quiet days Anna has fashioned for herself: Poppy wants to come home for a visit with her husband and 12-year-old daughter, Flynn, whom Anna has never met. Once she gets past the shock of hearing Poppy's voice on the answering machine, Anna accepts the inevitable, although Poppy doesn't arrive as promised. But she sends her husband, Marvin, and Anna's granddaughter, Flynn. Like it or not, Anna's life has changed forever.

Meanwhile, in another household, Jack and Stuart, two gay men, believe they have at last accomplished the perfect relationship, devoted to each other, except for the handsome Jack's occasional dalliance. Eventually, Jack's careless indiscretions awaken him to the dangers of sexual promiscuity when he is diagnosed as HIV positive. After he informs his partner, Stuart asks him to leave. Jack joins Anna's HIV support group and they have an immediate connection, something neither of them expects. Certainly, Anna is pivotal in Jack's endeavor to redefine his life. Even after he reconnects with Stuart, resolving many of their most troubling issues, Jack's friendship with Anna remains steadfast and primary.

Flynn is at the core of this novel, a bright, intuitive little girl with an understanding far beyond her years, living in the midst of these randomly associated adults. Flynn's presence in the lives of those around her is a parable for family and belonging. The ethereal, ill-fated Flynn is an anachronism, a child riddled with dark fears and fierce imaginings, yet precious to all who meet her. Through Flynn, the characters access the deepest places in themselves, where forgiveness and generosity coexist.

Anna undergoes profound personal changes, loving Flynn and the others who now comprise her nuclear family. With her loving characters, Manfredi's prose transports her readers through the significant emotions that govern our days: joy, grief, compassion and love. The once self-contained Anna freely opens her heart, facing the consequences of this choice, affirming life over loss. Reminding us of those human connections that sustain us, more importantly, the author skillfully emphasizes the axiom that in life there is change. And where there is change, there is acceptance. Luan Gaines/2003.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I need to get out of this storm, high up above the thunder", March 15, 2004

By	M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

One of the first things that struck me about Renee Manfredi's first novel is how precise, fully rounded and "real" her characters really are. Above the Thunder is a real treasure of a novel - smart, sophisticated, erudite, full of the richness of life, while also packing a real emotional punch. The novel is also remarkably "modern" in the way it approaches human relationships, and the friendships and connections that individuals develop with each other. For Manfredi, human relationships are never immutable and like the cells of the body, they grow and change, reflecting the constant and almost frenzied fluidity of life and society.

The core of Above the Thunder centers on Anna and her search for meaning in life. A newly widowed, Anna is almost disaffected and shut off from society. Wrapped up in her work as a medical technologist and grieving the dysfunctional relationship that she has had with her irresponsible, drug-addicted daughter, she is shocked and horrified when Marvin, her son-in-law comes to stay, bringing with him, Flynn, her imaginative, and emotionally conflicted ten-year-old grand daughter. It is Flynn, inspired and haunted by dreams and stories of reincarnation, which becomes the center of Anna's life, and forces her to re-evaluate her emotional emptiness. This is also the story of two lovers, Jack and Stuart, who are struggling with their own problems. Anna meets Jack at a support group for HIV patents, and what follows is a wonderful account of a friendship formed by two of the most unlikely of people.

Manfredi is extremely comfortable with her story; she lets the narrative flow at a nice, relaxed pace, effortlessly weaving the plot into the characters' inner lives. There is no doubt that she is a masterful storyteller, but it is her portrayal of character that is the real strength of the novel. Whether it is Jack - restless in his relationship with Stuart, searching the streets for Hector his hot Latino buddy, his world "empty at the center, his life without edges or direction." Or Stuart, kind, thoughtful and loyal, worried about Jack's cheating, and unsure whether to "confront him, ignore it, and hope it goes away, or leave him altogether." And Anna - disappointed as a mother and embittered but given a second chance when Flynn enters her life. The characters intertwine and interlace, just like the "jaded beads of a broken bracelet falling to the floor" or blood cells "dense and impenetrable as a blizzard." Life is inimitably connected, "everything is a circle." The moon, earth, the universe, and the cells of a body "even the future curved back through memory" - all are organized and interconnected. Above the Thunder is a profound and gorgeously written story, and a remarkably intuitive and symbolic look at the ties inevitably that bind us together.

Michael

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars!, January 24, 2004

By A Customer

I haven't read a book like this since Anne Marie McDonald's Fall On Your Knees - a truly remarkable novel with characters who are both relentlessly charming and haunting. This book will be around for a long time, and I have my bet placed on it as an Oprah's book club book within the year. Amazing first novel.