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Shout Her Lovely Name (2012)

by Natalie Serber(Favorite Author)

3.54 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0547634528 (ISBN13: 9780547634524)

languge

English

genre

Young Adult Fiction

publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

review 1: Really enjoyed this set of short stories ... Although I'm an idiot and didn't remember it was a set of short stories until I was a few in and thoroughly confused. The opening story was fabulous - I love when an author is able to set a truly frantic pace. It was a little weird to me though that 90% of the stories were about Ruby and Nora. They were great as were the non-Ruby/Nora stories but it was just weird that it started and finished without them. Overall, really enjoyed this writer and her characters though. These stories would make for great book club discussions.
review 2: A mother fighting a battle with the anorexic that has taken possession of her daughter. A college student on a visit home who is waylaid by her alcoholic father, leaving her mother sit... moreting home alone all evening. A mother who doesn't want to grow up, but still has moments of exquisite wisdom, just usually with other people's daughters. Is there anything that can be more frustrating, more hard to understand, more heartbreaking, and more illuminating than the relationships we have with our mothers, and our daughters? Natalie Serber's wonderful collection of short stories soars with the flight of that one fleeting moment of connection in the midst of conflict, one perfect snapshot of our mother as a person of worth rather than annoyance, reaching safety for a moment in a war against the world and its weapons. With rich, buttery language and a deep understanding of women from teenager to upper middle age, Serber revisits those moments all mothers and daughters have felt. The first story, "Shout Her Lovely Name" details from the mother's point of view the kidnapping of her daughter into a snarling, venomous daughter who flees from her mother as well as food, and the tiny moments when she lets them both back in. The next few stories detail the story of Ruby, first as a teenager lagging in a bar with her father, trying out her new adult persona as a college student, and in following stories as she negotiates a surprise pregnancy, being abandoned by the father, and starting a new life, then moving on to the point of view of her daughter, Nora, named for the Thin Man movies character, who cares for herself as her mother veers from man to man and location to location, but anchored with a few of those moments that make us stop wincing for Ruby and seeing her wisdom coming through despite herself. We wince for Ruby when she asks a waiter, serving Ruby and Nora and Nora's boyfriend, "which of us do you think make the couple?" We feel for her when she overdoes a dinner with a potential vet boyfriend. In the final story, another middle-aged woman, Cassie, is planning a surprise 50th birthday party for her husband, while trying to figure out what her place is as her children leave the nest, and harboring fantasies about her therapist. She asks her therapist, what should she expect as far as developmental milestones in midlife? He answers that she no longer can see her life as an upward spiral. The author's prose is a joy to read. In one scene, Cassie remembers late night with her breastfeeding daughter falling asleep on her breast, knowing that her son and husband were safe and asleep, --"Cassie's family was precious as water cupped in her palms and there was nothing she could do to stop it from seeping through her fingers except hold tight and still for as long as possible." This book is a great book for mothers and daughters, and women, to share with each other. less

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