Losing Charlotte [Paperback]

Losing Charlotte does not concentrate on describing the blow-by-blow stark visuals of a the fatal hemorrhaging. That takes place in an operating room where her family (and we) don't witness the final ebb of life. But this sensitive novel does revolve around the loss of a hopeful mother-to-be. A mother-to-be, Charlotte, whose twins are delivered a bit prematurely and who then seems on the road to recovery but develops rare complications. Next thing Charlotte's sister Knox, who along with other family sits in the waiting room, knows, her stunned brother-in-law, Bruce, is being led out of the operating room and away for private counseling, and other doctors come to deliver the sad news to the rest of the clan. No chance to say real good-byes. Just a sudden cessation of a blooming life...and two children in incubators who will have to grow up without their mother.

Bruce, so rudely and unexpectedly bereaved, is overwhelmed with his responsibilities as a new father when the boys come home from the hospital. At this point, Knox, who regrets side-stepping of her sister's previous overtures to share in the milestones of the pregnancy, journeys to the Big Apple to help Bruce establish as schedule for the twins. She and Bruce are virtual strangers, so the question is whether they can function as a compatible team, or whether she will actually end up being more in Bruce's way. How will caring for the helpless infants change both Knox and Bruce? How will Charlotte's empty space affect them?

LOSING CHARLOTTE does revolve around a death, but this novel is perhaps more accurately a sensitive, observant character study than a sudsy melodrama. With patience and thoroughness, first-time author Heather Clay delves into the background of her cast. Although the chapters are, except for the Prologue, all entitled "Knox" or "Bruce," and these two receive a greater part of the attention, Clay also gives dimension to Ned, the boyfriend; Marlene, Knox's confidante; the youngest Bolling, Knox and Charlotte's brother, Robbie; the Bolling parents whom their children either flee or stick to like glue; and others.

LOSING CHARLOTTE wraps the reader in the lives of people who -- ready or not -- must face the loss of a relatively young loved one. It explores the sisterly bond, where that can break down, and how it might be healed, at least partially. It also studies marriage and how that bond, frail at times, can be unbreakable but incomprehensible to outsiders. Its graceful and uncompromising insights enlighten us not only about the struggles of the characters, but remind us of our own as well. Sometimes when things are proceeding in a routine fashion, we forget that implacable change can swoop down in a moment and engulf us. As Clay puts it with Whitmanesque intonations: "Knox was mortal, as was everything and everyone she'd ever loved. This was the music that had always been playing, its notes the only constant in all the world; she could finally make it out, humming in the dead grass and within every breath and step she took."

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully Perceptive Debut, 2 April 2010
By Leyla Sanai "leyla" (glasgow) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Losing Charlotte (Paperback)
Writing successfully about bereavement is trickier than it sounds. Many attempt it but few manage to convey the complexity of the emotions involved. Only those who have never been through it think there's just a monotonal sadness which gradually fades and disappears - bereavement carries many hues - shock, denial, anger, grief, recurrent memories and dreams and an everlasting presence of the loss.

That Heather Clay manages to write so beautifully about this mixed bag of emotions is to her credit. That she does it in her debut novel is exceptional. And Losing Charlotte is not the depressing read the subject matter suggests. Like Catherine O'Flynn's debut What Was Lost, , which won the Costa Best First Novel Award in 2008, it is too enthralling to evoke despondency.

Knox Bolling is a thirty one year-old woman raised on a thoroughbred horse farm in Kentucky. She has a job teaching dyslexic kids but still lives on the family estate, close to her parents. She has always had an ambiguous relationship with her beautiful older sister Charlotte. Charlotte was always the fearless, adventurous one, creeping out at night to illicit trysts when they were teenagers, moving away at the first opportunity, dropping out of one college and winging a drama major at another. For the past few years she has lived in New York. Initially she drifted from one bit-job to the next, but a few years ago she met and married a fund manager, Bruce.

The blurb on the back reveals the death of Charlotte but the visceral impact of the event still has the power to shock. How the family cope with this news and the unfolding of subsequent events make up the bulk of this novel.

Clay's writing is elegant and concise, reminiscent of the Canadian Mary Lawson in its ability to convey life in a rural community and the depths that underlie family relationships. She is particularly good at casting up the complicated tangle of sibling relationships, weakened by the wind knots of envy and unexpressed resentment. Yet the love that supersedes these petty niggles is clearly evoked. Knox's devotion to her family is overwhelming, but the reader is attuned to her denial in various aspects of her relationships - for example the way she persuades herself she's not envious of her sister even as she avoids looking at the ultrasound picture of her sister's twins sent weeks before.

Clay writes with a wisdom and perception that belies her youth. Time and time again she effortlessly captures complicated situations and feelings with artful and precise phrases. A flashback to Bruce's youth has him phoning a schoolfriend who has suffered a terrible shock. Even as the young Bruce yaps on inconsequentially with his mother's concerned look boring into his back, we are made aware of the competing emotions in his head:

'He knew his mother was watching him, could feel her look on his back, but he had to keep moving fast. It was clear that if he didn't leap over the quiet places both he and Toby would fall into them, be left clawing at air, plunging down.'

Following on from this, his mother is rightly annoyed at him for fabricating a story to take his friend's mind off his troubles, and Clay inhabits an eleven year-old's mind with uncanny acuity as Bruce reverts to brattishness, explained thus;

'Bruce couldn't help himself. When his mother was unhappy with him, he got trapped in the body of a hater, was left pounding on soundproof glass while that guy, embarrassed, venomous, spoke words for him, gestured for him.'

The adult Bruce's love for his wife Charlotte is also portrayed with insight. Bruce is well aware of his wife's imperfections - her propensity to exaggerate or embellish for effect, her tendency to act as if she's from an impoverished background instead of an affluent one to achieve some kind of street cred, her tendency to self aggrandizement and frequent mentioning of exes and other men who have desired her. This builds up a much more realistic picture of Charlotte as a person, flawed and real. Not enough writers present their characters in this muscularly three dimensional way.

And Bruce's initial reaction to being swept up by love for this stunning and much-desired woman is also a surprise - scared of disappearing into the vortex of this love, he acts unpredictably, again adding to the plausibility of the characters since humans behave in unfathomable ways.

This ability of Clay's to analyse beyond the superficial is astonishing in a debut. This, together with the gorgeous clarity of the prose, is what lifts this novel so far above the norm. At every step the reader experiences what Charlotte's family does. The scenes of her demise are shocking and haunting, made even more credible by the rapid turn from all seeming well to all going horrifically wrong. The months that follow on from Charlotte's death and her sister's determination to help with Charlotte's young twins are also totally convincing. And once again, humans are shown to be fallible as it becomes clear that Knox cannot contain her emotions to those of helpful aunt.

This is the best debut I've read so far this year. Heather Clay has leapt into the league occupied by masters of human nature such as Rose Tremain and Sue Miller.

Sisters Charlotte and Knox Bolling grew up on their family Four Corners Kentucky horse farm. Each knows thoroughbreds as well as they know people and in many respects are more comfortable with horses. When Charlotte leaves for New York, Knox resents her leaving her to remain on the farm.

Charlotte marries finance manager Bruce Tavert. They move to the West Village of Manhattan, but though geographically apart, the siblings remain close yet apparently different. Charlotte gives birth to twin boys, but dies soon after her sons are born prematurely. Although hardly knowing one another except through Charlotte and their grief for her, Knox and Bruce raise the babies together as she leaves the farm for the big city.

Losing Charlotte is a fascinating character study of three people who are tied together through the death of one of them and the births of the next generation. Bruce and Knox grieve their loss, but the latter is the more fascinating protagonist. Whereas Bruce is New York banker stereotype; Knox struggles to adapt to Manhattan after the Kentucky farm especially raising her nephews and finally dealing with her assortment of contrary feelings towards Bruce, the twins and ultimately Charlotte. She changes throughout the story line as she goes from ire for what she perceives is her sibling's desertion to innocent caretaker to almost in love with her brother-in-law to finally uplifting nurturer. She makes this family drama an entertaining deep tale

Harriet Klausner

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