Stewart, Sean: Mockingbird
Mockingbird (1998)
Written by: Sean Stewart
Genre: Magical Realism
Pages: 266 (Trade Paperback)
Why I Read It: You can thank the Mount TBR Challenge for this one, but there's backstory as to how I discovered the author to begin with, and that discovery came in the form of the book called Star Wars: Yoda: Dark Rendezvous. I know, you think I'm kidding, right? But pre-2005, the majority of books that I read were part of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. I'd been reading them since I was in middle school, and in 2004, when this book was released, had finally started to branch out to other non-Star Wars science fiction and fantasy. At any rate, I read this book, my expectations low because I wasn't all that excited about the prequel stories in the Expanded Universe, and ended up discovering that Star Wars: Yoda: Dark Rendezvous was one of the best damn Star Wars books I'd ever read. I loved it SO MUCH that when I saw Sean Stewart's original work, Perfect Circle, in the store, I actually bought it. Please note: I had been reading Star Wars books for over a decade, sampling dozens of different SF/F authors through my Star Wars-coated lens. Sean Stewart was the FIRST Star Wars author that grabbed me enough to actually want to read his original work. So I did, and I loved it (alas, Perfect Circle was read in pre-review days, but here's a brief review of it here). Oddly, though, I never sought out more of his work. I ended up with a copy of Mockingbird because a friend scored me a copy (and why he scored me a copy, I don't remember, it's been that long ago). At any rate, because I knew I loved the author, I wasn't in a huge hurry to read it, so I let it sit and languish on the shelves. Until now. And I'm so glad I finally dusted this off and gave it a shot.
The premise: ganked from the publisher: Sometimes you have to go back home.
Elena Beauchamp used magic the way other people used credit cards, and now that she’s dead, her daughters Toni and Candy have a debt to pay. Set in modern-day Houston, Texas, this is a funny and moving novel of voodoo, pregnancy, and family ties. While Toni sorts out the mess that Elena left behind, she must also come to terms with her childhood and with the supernatural and dangerous gift that she has inherited from her mother.
Mockingbird: A novel of voodoo, pregnancy, and Houston.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Vague-ish spoilers, because this is the kind of book you really don't spoil, you know? That said, if you're paranoid, just skip to "My Rating" and you'll be just fine. Everyone else, onward!
Okay, so WHY THE HELL haven't I been reading Sean Stewart? WHY IN THE HELL has it taken me . . . *counts on fingers since 2005* . . . SEVEN YEARS to read him again?
Because damn, he's an excellent writer. And let me just say: you know how I pine for books written in the South that do a beautiful job of marrying place, atmosphere, setting with character, but never quite find books that fit the bill? THIS is what I want those books to be. THIS is what I'm looking for, but set in Appalachia rather than Texas. Not that there's anything wrong about Texas. I'm just saying that if I read a book LIKE THIS, set in Tennessee instead of Texas (or better yet, if I could write a book like this, set in Tennessee instead of Texas), I'd die a happy devil.
So yeah. I need to get a hold of Stewart's backlist and add everything I don't have to a wishlist. So I don't forget about him EVER AGAIN.
Okay, let's review this sucker. I'm sure you want to know why I'm freaking out, right?
Honestly, read the first page. If the first page doesn't capture you with the voice, then you'll probably never get why I'm freaking out. The first page is what smacked me upside the head and made me go, "Oh, yeah… this is why I like this writer so much!"
And if you can't get your hands on a sample, here are some quotes that really don't do justice to the voice, atmosphere, or setting, but ones that stood out for their descriptions or the way they hit the nail on the head.
Page 38:
When I crept downstairs I found Penny Friesen standing at the long table nibbling on a piece of cornbread. At twenty she had been prettier than Momma, I suppose, in a bland white-bread way, but her looks hadn't lasted, and she had never blossomed as Momma had. Momma at forty and fifty and even sixty had so much life in her, the room got bright and dangerous when she walked in. But Bill Sr.'s big shadow had left Penny pale and starved for sunlight.
Page 50:
When I told Momma I didn't care about makeup or hairstyles or what dress I was going to wear, she used to say to me, "Honey, I've been pretty and I've been ugly, and ugly's worse." Another one was, "Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean down to the bone."
Page 68-69 (which I loved because while I've never had morning sickness, this passage describes my migraine experiences perfectly):
"Morning sickness." The words seem to promise that you'll be okay in the afternoon, don't they? Fat chance. I hadn't had an appetite for five days. It wasn't just like having the flu either; my body was engaged in a much weirder betrayal. Food didn't smell like food. I could pick up a cookie and the smell of the baking soda in it would be overpowering. The ketones in bananas nearly made me faint. And that acrid, sap-green taste in lettuce! You might as well ask someone to gnaw twigs. There was a chemical stink on cabbage' a strange, industrial stench bound to anything canned; a rotting-garbage odor coming off fruits and vegetables. My books assured me that the thing to do was to have little meals as frequently as possible, so I started each day with a soda cracker. If you want to know what it was like to get that cracker down, go to your bathroom and eat a bar of soap.
Page 123:
"Your momma always did like easy money too," my father remarked.
Your parents always know how to poke your bruises
Page 255 (which stood out because suddenly, I felt like Stewart was writing out of my own mother's head):
As for me? I will give her everything, even my failures, because a mother can do no less. She can have my brains and my wariness and my bitterness and my love, I can't deny her anything. She will take what she needs from this strange mixed blessing, and god willing, she will find her own uses for it.
Page 256:
I don't think I will ever be able to separate my mother from myself. As long as I live, then part of her lives too; and the same will be true for my daughter, and hers, and hers.
Now that I've got most of the quotes out of my system, I can point to them to show you, as a reader, why this book resonated with me on such a deep, emotional, somewhat primal level. Because I identified with Toni, the female narrator, in a way that I rarely do in fiction. Here was a woman determined to make her own way in the world, divorced from her mother's influence and even presence, a woman who prayed that death would sever that connection between herself and her mother, a connection that was fraught with peril. Here is a woman does what she does for her mother out of the obligation of love, who's the one everyone in her family relies on, the one who has a prickly edge to her and wants to be everything to everyone, despite kind of resenting it.
You see, I felt like Stewart was kind of writing about me. I'm no genius actuary, but I do work in the finance industry, so I was giddy that I understood the sections where Toni was talking about how trades work. But unlike Toni, I'm married with no real intention of having kids outside the four-legged furry kind (though I reserve the right to change my mind), so we're different there. I have no brothers or sisters to drive me bonkers, no father figure, and my mother's still alive. But there's so much about the core of this character that I relate to that it was horribly difficult to put the book down.
In case you haven't figured it out, I've got mommy issues. And I think that unless you're one of those people who dreads mother's day because you hate going through all those sappy cards about how wonderful mothers are when that doesn't fit your relationship with your mother AT ALL, then you may have a hard time understanding why someone like me can connect so fiercely to Toni's story.
But regardless, Stewart does a fabulous job of making Toni's situation understandable and relatable. Toni's mother is such a larger than life presence that I think anyone can understand why Toni feels the way she does. I also need to note that it's entirely possible that I'm reading WAY too much into the relationship of this story. And obviously, my own mother wasn't ridden by gods and she didn't inflict any such thing on me either. But on an emotional level, I can relate so well it's not even funny.
What is funny is that the author who brought me this experience is male.
The day I'm writing this review is an odd one. I've been reading a lot of different views about the different kinds of responses men get versus the kinds of responses women get when they write anything inflammatory. I've been thinking heavily about the different kinds of feminism and what it means when you don't meet someone else's standards of feminism, and how those clashes can really mess with your head, because if you consider yourself feminist, it's easy to get pissed if someone else laughs and says that you aren't.
This has also got me thinking about whether or not men can truly do a good job writing from the female point of view. Thanks to the absolutely insane political atmosphere in the U.S. right now, I've been reading more than my fair share of why men think they way they do, why that's right or wrong, and all kinds of articles that end up clouding up my brain and putting me in a bad mood. I should note these bad moods aren't because I don't want to hear THE TRUTH, whatever that may be, it's because these issues are SO IMPORTANT that for me, it's nearly paralyzing. Why I'm telling you all of this, I don't know. Actually, I do know:
I think that Stewart did a fantastic job of writing a female point of view. And while reading, I kept asking myself, "Why? How can he do this?" as if this were some amazing miracle, all the while reminding myself that some female readers will read this and say bullshit, that he didn't write a female character well at all.
And I'm not saying, either, that Stewart gets it right with 100% accuracy. It's about 95%. Toni has an obsession with her sister's beauty (which is right on: in my experience, women can -- but don't always -- fixate on other women in their social circle who are -- in their opinion -- much prettier), and with that fixation is a constant mention of Candy's (the sister's) breasts. And that's where I said, "Eh, not so much." It reminded me of an article I read where male writers, when trying to get into the heads of women, forget that woman aren't obsessed with boobs, but because men are obsessed with boobs, they assume that women are too and therefore mention boobs.
Whatever. Sometimes, it made sense that Toni would comment on them. Sometimes, I thought "enough already!" But that's a small, tiny flaw that made me roll my eyes and smile.
More interesting was what this book had to say about beauty and the sexualization of women and what men do and do not want. And when I say "what this book had to say," I should be more specific and say, "what this book makes you ponder" in that it doesn't give any real answers, but some interesting viewpoints instead, viewpoints and insights that seem more relevant than ever given the current political atmosphere, despite this book being published over ten years ago.
I'm not going to get into specifics here, but there's a scene where Toni and Candy are talking about porn and what men want that's both puzzling, eye-opening, and more than a little weird. This is what got me thinking, and maybe if the political climate wasn't what it IS right now, I would've never started thinking about those things. Sometimes I talk about there being a time and a place to read certain books, and this may be one of those times that was just right.
The ending of the book kind of rushes up on you. Emotionally, I felt satisfied, though I had some lingering questions: what would become of Candy and Carlos, and why was it so important for HER to marry HIM? Would Toni find her husband, or was it implied with Candy's premonition that it would be Bill Jr.? Or does Toni realize she doesn't NEED a husband, either because she, indeed, is repressing her desire for women or because she's just bad-ass, doesn't need a man to make it in this world?
But these are the kinds of questions I really don't need the answers to. I'd like to have them, sure, but what's more important, especially with this kind of story, is the emotional resolution, and that feels very good here.
My Rating: Couldn't Put It Down
I loved this so much that I promptly ordered two more Sean Stewart books off of Paperback Swap before remembering that I have a monthly cap on the number of books I can get in a month! Oooops… old habits, they die hard. Oh well, it'll be well worth it, though I suspect I will space the reading of those books out so as to not glut myself entirely on his fiction. Be that as it may, this book had me from the first page, and it's what I crave from so much small-town and/or Appalachian fiction that I simply don't get. Not that Mockingbird is in any way small town or Appalachian fiction: it's set in Houston, Texas, for goodness' sakes! But what this book does: fuse character, setting, and place in such a way to create a unique atmosphere is what I want and crave from those aforementioned styles of fiction, but that I never quite seem to get. Toni was a character I immediately related to, and her rather magical-realist journey is one I can see myself reading again and again. This was very, very close to getting the top rating of "My Precious," and only a few things held me back from awarding it said top rating. But no matter. It's rare that a book other than a YA or other serial book gets the "couldn't put it down" rating, but when it does, you know just how damn happy I am with it.
Cover Commentary: I like the style, though admittedly the cover really does nothing for me. It matches the cover art for Perfect Circle, so they'll look nice together on my shelf, but other than that, it's serviceable.
Next up: River Marked by Patricia Briggs