Life Sentences: A Novel
by Laura Lippman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Laura LippmanEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-03-10
ISBN: 0061128899
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: William Morrow
Book Reviews of Life Sentences: A Novel
Book Review: A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma
Summary: 5 Stars
Don't be misguided (and then disappointed) into expecting a conventional crime thriller. This is a novel about the impact of memories on people's lives and the impact of people's lives on their memories.
Cassandra Fallows, a successful author of two memoirs, is trying to bounce back after an unsuccessful turn as a novelist. She decides on a thirty year (and more) backward journey into her Baltimore childhood, where she was the lone Caucasian in her group of black girlfriends from economically diverse backgrounds. She had already written extensively about her two marriages and her father, a professor of known intellect and even better known infidelities. He left Cassandra's mother following a scandalous and public declaration of love for another woman he declared his "destiny". And now Cassandra is contemplating her own certitude as she mines the detritus of the past once again and attempts to solve a few riddles.
The center of her new memoir is the enigmatic Calliope Jenkins, one of Cassandra's girlhood friends, who served seven years in prison for contempt of court. She was accused of murdering her infant son, but there was no body found and no confession extracted. Cassandra is determined to track down Calliope and her other friends--Trish, Fatima, and Donna--and conduct her own investigation into this superannuated case, which requires her to locate some of the police and attorneys that were involved. Unfortunately, their cooperation is not as forthcoming as she thought it would be. As the story advances, the reader gains perspective into the lives of her old friends (and others involved in this case), including their various and resentful reactions to her previous memoirs. These grudges fuel their motivations for stonewalling Cassandra or purposely misdirecting her. She had placed her friends in her memoirs peripherally, but they claim, erroneously. They think Cassandra is a narcissist with a self-promoting agenda and are therefore eager to subvert her newest installation.
Along with buried memories are buried secrets, and everyone has their share. Although Calliope is intended as the fulcrum of Cassandra's memoir, she is ultimately a mirror for Cassandra's life--the betrayals she felt and the betrayals she dealt; her mixed bag of ethics; her insight and blindness; and her hunger for love and recognition. Calliope is a mystery, but the larger mystery is concealed within the filter of Cassandra's memories. Ultimately, the veracity of her prior memoirs is a pivotal question in this unconventional thriller.
Lippman is a master of language and storytelling. Her focus on memories is both the essence and a departure for the story as a whole. Cassandra's determination to interview her old friends--moneyed and politically connected Donna and her attorney brother, Reg, (who was Calliope's second attorney), surburbanized Tish, and exuberant Fatima, a former wild one whose life now revolves around the church and her many fine clothes. And then there is Calliope, the riddle. Do Cassandra's old friends know anything about her whereabouts or the truth of the crime? What about Teena, a detective on the case who suddenly dropped out with a disability soon after Calliope went to jail? And there is her first lawyer, Gloria, an elusive figure who is reticent to cooperate.
As I felt my heart beating faster and the pages turning, (ignoring all distractions like phone or thunderstorms), I inevitably understood that Cassandra's urgency to find Calliope and solve the crime is inextricably linked to her own uncharted and unidentified doubt and dread.
With elegant prose and layered implications, the novel reverberates with its themes of maturation and memories, truth and perception.
Summary of Life Sentences: A Novel
Author Cassandra Fallows has achieved remarkable success by baring her life on the page. Her two widely popular memoirs continue to sell briskly, acclaimed for their brutal, unexpurgated candor about friends, family, lovers?and herself. But now, after a singularly unsuccessful stab at fiction, Cassandra believes she may have found the story that will enable her triumphant return to nonfiction.
When Cassandra was a girl, growing up in a racially diverse middle-class neighborhood in Baltimore, her best friends were all black: elegant, privileged Donna; sharp, shrewd Tisha; wild and worldly Fatima. A fifth girl orbited their world?a shy, quiet, unobtrusive child named Calliope Jenkins?who, years later, would be accused of killing her infant son. Yet the boy's body was never found and Calliope's unrelenting silence on the subject forced a judge to jail her for contempt. For seven years, Calliope refused to speak and the court was finally forced to let her go. Cassandra believes this still unsolved real-life mystery, largely unknown outside Baltimore, could be her next bestseller.
But her homecoming and latest journey into the past will not be welcomed by everyone, especially by her former friends, who are unimpressed with Cassandra's success?and are insistent on their own version of their shared history. And by delving too deeply into Calliope's dark secrets, Cassandra may inadvertently unearth a few of her own?forcing her to reexamine the memories she holds most precious, as the stark light of truth illuminates a mother's pain, a father's betrayal . . . and what really transpired on a terrible day that changed not only a family but an entire country.
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