Overview
Do we truly know the ones we love or do we invent them, turning them into fictions, projections of our own desires? When a chance car accident sends writer Bryn Redding into a deep coma, a whole luminous life is eclipsed, plunged into a state of darkness. The only glimmers that remain appear through perceptions of those who love her, but contradictions between these views render them suspect. These images of Bryn conflict acutely for Djuna, Bryn's lover of four years, and Vera, Bryn's mother. Gathered at her hospital bedside, each stakes a claim to Bryn's identity, her past and future. Who is Bryn Redding? Is she the difficult, angry girl her mother remembers, or the vibrant iconoclast her lover adores? As friends from the present and past - the community Bryn has built to supplant her family of origin - gather at her side, a many-faceted picture emerges of a woman whose inner life is a mystery. When one of these friends presents Vera with copies of Bryn's published works, Vera comes to understand that her memories of the past contrast irreconcilably with her daughter's. Bryn's tough, spare writing provides yet another picture of Bryn Redding, the manufactured layers of personae and the history that lurks beneath, all the while cautioning the reader that fiction is never a reliable mirror of reality. As Bryn hovers between life and death, the antagonism between Vera and Djuna ebbs, each coming to recognize that the Bryn of their imaginations will never be restored to them, and that recovery, if achieved at all, will bring further mysteries.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
After a car accident, Bryn Redding, a writer, lies comatose in a Los Angeles hospital as her mother, Vera, and her lover, Djuna, struggle to clarify their complex attachments to her. Interspersed with poems by Bryn and cleaved in the middle by Splinters, Bryn's novel-within-the-novelabout her childhood abuse at the hands of her stepfather and a lesbian relationship in contemporary L.A.the narrative alternates between Vera's and Djuna's perspectives. What gradually emerges from these three points of view is a nuanced picture of each woman's conflicting emotions. Vera, an overprotective Midwestern housemom, had never acknowledged the abuse of her daughter or Bryn's alcoholism, suicide attempts or lifestyle choices. Djuna, a native Angeleno and photographer, had staked her future on her relationship with Bryn. As Vera and Djuna struggle over Bryn's care and their hostility toward one another, they seek to come to terms with Bryn's enigmatic persona and the prospect that she may never recover. Betraying a poet's proclivity for metaphor (Wolverton's collection, Black Slip, was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award), the prose in this first novel can be overblown (Djuna spills into her car "like honey swirled from a spoon"). But as Bryn shows signs of awakening, the narrative gathers momentum, building to a conclusion as oddly comforting as a good cry or a rainy day. (Sept.)Library Journal
In her latest novel, Wolverton (Black Slip, Clothespin Fever, 1992) examines the ripples that an unexpected, traumatic event has on friends and family. Bryn Redding slips into a coma following a car crash, throwing together her lover, Djuna, and her mother, Vera. It's a most unharmonious relationship at the start, marked by skepticism and resentment and enough hissing and spitting to make two tomcats proud. But most of all it's marked by the aloneness of the two women who, sadly, can't occupy the same room at the same time for bedside vigils of Bryn. The format of this book upholds this separateness as private thoughts and anguish are recorded in chapters headed "Djuna" and "Vera." The book has some compelling elements in it, especially in the plot twists and in Wolverton's ability to pin down in print what loneliness feels like. Recommended for public libraries.Lisa S. Nussbaum, Euclid Pub. Lib., OhioKirkus Reviews
Poet Wolverton (ed., Hers: Brilliant New Fiction by Lesbian Writers, 1995) wears many hats—her ambitious debut as a novelist features several poems that could stand alone, a story-within-the- story that gives some needed distance from her characters (to tell what would otherwise be a now-trite incest tale), and a stark but melodious prose style.Professional photographer Djuna Rifkin doesn't know whether she'll be able to cope when her lover, writer Bryn Redding, goes into a coma following a car accident. The last thing Djuna expects is that she'll gain strength and courage from the most unlikely source of all: Bryn's mother Vera. Djuna knows, from Bryn, that Vera stayed married to Bryn's stepfather Chet even though he beat Vera and molested Bryn throughout much of her childhood; what she and Bryn had not known was the extent to which Vera has been living in miserable denial. Together, as Vera and Djuna try to coax Bryn out of her coma, they grow to understand her as neither of them ever has before and, in the process, become friends—of a sort—themselves. When Bryn starts to recover, it is Vera—from whom she's been estranged for years—she turns to in a childlike way; she remembers nothing of the past five years, including all the time she's spent with Djuna. Bryn's femme friend Emily lends vital support to Djuna, Vera, and Bryn. Those who hope for a neatly packaged happy ending will be disappointed: Wolverton provides these women with no easy-outs. But she has created a woman-centered story to which any mother, daughter, friend, or lover can relate.
One could argue that Wolverton aims too high here, but the flaws are generally overpowered by confident style and affecting characters.