Book a Week Challenge 2008 - 4/52, Wives and Sisters by Natalie R. Collins

[lizziec]

Wives and Sisters had been sitting around on our bookcase waiting for me to get around to reading it after no1typo recommended it to me. I reorganised our bookcases the other day, which was no mean feat, and in the process I found this book again.

The story is one of a girl who grew up mormon, went through various traumatic experiences which she was not supported through, and started to try and find her way out of the church and begin to heal herself. The response of the male characters of the church in response to any queries she makes about the experiences she has undergone is to pray and to get over them because they are in the past. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn't so tragic and true to life.

The book itself is full of suspense, as the main character, Allison, begins her journey out of Mormonism she also begins her journey to find the people responsible for the traumatic incidences in her childhood.

The author, Natalie R. Collins, is an ex-mormon herself. I was pleasantly surprised by her writing and the way mormonism features in her book. I possibly appreciated it more than others because I recognised so many of the incidences as being part of my own childhood, for example, the excerpt below about prayer. I found that particular passage very funny, I think largely because I recognised the situation as one I had been in so many times (not the actual outing, but the the praying morning, noon and night, the words used and the trying to make prayers different so they would stand out.)

At this point in the book, Allison is 8 and Kevin is 6

     Kevin bowed his head and started praying without waiting for my father to urge me to do so again. He wanted the attention. He was going to say this prayer.
     "Our dear Father in Heaven," he began, "we are so thankful we could be together today as a family and we are thankful for the food before us."
     The mature words he used were common to us. We heard and said these words time and time again. We'd been hearing them since the day we were born. We knew how to pray and we prayed well. We did it at every meal, every night before we went to bed, many times during our Sunday meetings, and during Monday night Family Home Evenings. Prayer came second nature to the Jensen kids, and to all kids raised in good Mormon families.
     The important thing, of course, was to be able to throw something different in, something to make your prayer stand out, earning you the praise of adult family or ward members.
     "Please bless this food that it will nourish and strengthen our bodies and do us the good we need. And please bless all the sick people. Bless Mrs. Appleworth that the wart on her nosewill go away and it won't be so hard to look at her," he said, referring to our fellow ward member and close neighbor.
     My mother gasped aloud but didn't stop him. I figured this had to be his trump card. I couldn't have been more wrong.
     "And please bless Aunt Carol that Grandpa won't find out she really likes girls because Mom says Grandpa will kill her."
     The pandemonium that followed took the attention away from me, and I would have been grateful except my father's foul moods tended to explode like a bomb, ripping into everyone close enough to hear the blast. A tearful Kevin went to his room without dinner for reasons he didn't really understand. Grandma screamed loudly and had to led to my mother's room to lie dow. Grandpa used language I'd never heard before in my life.
     I didn't really understand why Aunt Carol's liking girls was such a big deal. After all, I liked girls, too. My best friends were all girls.
     Aunt Carol never quite forgave my brother for outing her at Sunday Fast and Testimony dinner.

I would really recommend this book to people wanting to find out more about mormonism while also reading what is essentially a crime novel. The author is very good at inserting details of Mormon beliefs and cultural life into the narrative without interrupting the flow of the novel. I would really like to read more by her.

CBB Book a Week challenge 2008
1/52, Stasiland by Anna Funder
2/52, The Nazis, A Warning from History by Laurence Rees
3/52, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Comments

[twigathy.livejournal.com]

You might like Whit by Iain Banks (linkeh) which is all about a member of a cult going out into the world of the "unsaved". I'd lend you my copy but it's back in Taplow like so many of my things :-(.

[no1typo.livejournal.com]

that made me remember pill
please bless mummy's meat and buff's meat and my meat and bless mummy's potatoes etc etc etc