Cage of Stars by Jacquelyn Mitchard
This novel is about revenge and forgiveness with fully developed character portrayals and a plot of surprising twists. The setting is in Utah in the Mormon community; later, it shifts to California.
The story starts when twelve year-old Veronica Swan--Ronnie for short--finds the murdered bodies of her two little sisters while playing hide-and-seek with them. She also sees Scott Early, the schizophrenic man who murdered them, sitting at the picnic table in his underwear and sobbing. The family is devastated, and it takes them a long time to be able to go on with their lives. Although Ronnie tries to do what she can for others, she cannot handle her internalized anger. When her parents find some relief by forgiving Scott Early, Ronnie wants her revenge. Her salvation comes in an unexpected way, very different from the implied ending throughout the story.
This is a story that has to be awfully hard to tell for any writer. Even if I found some characters to be somewhat unrealistic and idealized, most characters had an impossible choice to make. Through the impeccable prose of the author, however, the reader feels empathy for each character, finding pieces of himself in them and especially in Ronnie.
The writer pinpoints Ronnie's feelings with these words. It was the guilt that made my anger like a burn that no one ever ran under cold water; and so it kept burning and burning down to my bones. And as time went by, and other peoples' cooled down, mine did not. It got hotter, and became a part of me, and it didn't heal until long after.
On the negative side, the highly emotional handling of the story can be called exploitation of the reader, but it is not. The repetition of events and feelings in Ronnie's mind only shows the depth of trauma she has experienced.
A lot of space for explanation is given to the Mormon faith. Even though this was interesting and informative for me, from the storytelling point of view, this type of handling of any piece of fiction might be considered preaching or overusing the narrative. Yet, the skillful crafting of the story makes the reader overlook the unrealistic and sermonizing aspects in the story.
The author Jacquelyn Mitchard was born in 1955, in Chicago. She has worked as a high school English teacher, a newspaper reporter, a lifestyle columnist, and a magazine editor. Her first book The deep End of the Ocean was the choice of Oprah Winfrey Book Club in September 1996, and it later became a movie. Mitchard's other books are: Still Summer; Christmas, Present; The Breakdown Lane; The Most Wanted; Mother Less Child: The Love Story of a Family; The Rest Of Us: Dispatches From The Mother Ship; Now You See Her.
Cage of Stars is 204 pages in hardcover with ISBN-10: 0446578754 and ISBN-13: 978-0446578752. This is a gripping book of emotional suspense, and despite its disturbing plot of heartache, it displays somewhat of a feel-good ending. I recommend it, among many reasons, for its inspirational quality.
The story starts when twelve year-old Veronica Swan--Ronnie for short--finds the murdered bodies of her two little sisters while playing hide-and-seek with them. She also sees Scott Early, the schizophrenic man who murdered them, sitting at the picnic table in his underwear and sobbing. The family is devastated, and it takes them a long time to be able to go on with their lives. Although Ronnie tries to do what she can for others, she cannot handle her internalized anger. When her parents find some relief by forgiving Scott Early, Ronnie wants her revenge. Her salvation comes in an unexpected way, very different from the implied ending throughout the story.
This is a story that has to be awfully hard to tell for any writer. Even if I found some characters to be somewhat unrealistic and idealized, most characters had an impossible choice to make. Through the impeccable prose of the author, however, the reader feels empathy for each character, finding pieces of himself in them and especially in Ronnie.
The writer pinpoints Ronnie's feelings with these words. It was the guilt that made my anger like a burn that no one ever ran under cold water; and so it kept burning and burning down to my bones. And as time went by, and other peoples' cooled down, mine did not. It got hotter, and became a part of me, and it didn't heal until long after.
On the negative side, the highly emotional handling of the story can be called exploitation of the reader, but it is not. The repetition of events and feelings in Ronnie's mind only shows the depth of trauma she has experienced.
A lot of space for explanation is given to the Mormon faith. Even though this was interesting and informative for me, from the storytelling point of view, this type of handling of any piece of fiction might be considered preaching or overusing the narrative. Yet, the skillful crafting of the story makes the reader overlook the unrealistic and sermonizing aspects in the story.
The author Jacquelyn Mitchard was born in 1955, in Chicago. She has worked as a high school English teacher, a newspaper reporter, a lifestyle columnist, and a magazine editor. Her first book The deep End of the Ocean was the choice of Oprah Winfrey Book Club in September 1996, and it later became a movie. Mitchard's other books are: Still Summer; Christmas, Present; The Breakdown Lane; The Most Wanted; Mother Less Child: The Love Story of a Family; The Rest Of Us: Dispatches From The Mother Ship; Now You See Her.
Cage of Stars is 204 pages in hardcover with ISBN-10: 0446578754 and ISBN-13: 978-0446578752. This is a gripping book of emotional suspense, and despite its disturbing plot of heartache, it displays somewhat of a feel-good ending. I recommend it, among many reasons, for its inspirational quality.
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