Heat Lightning

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
The motivations that lie behind the weaving and the unraveling of the family mosaic are central to Leah Hager Cohen's first novel, Heat Lightning. Cohen, the author of two assured works of nonfiction, Train Go Sorry: Inside A Deaf World and Glass, Paper, Beans, here explores the relationships between three strong women over the course of one remarkable summer. Through the finely nuanced narrative voice of 11-year-old "Mole" Grummer, we learn that she and her older sister, Tilly, have been raised from infancy by their Aunt Hy after their parents drowned during a storm on the Kittiwake River. Caring but remote, Hy has never been very forthcoming about their parents' death, supplying only meager and, from the sisters' point of view, impractical scraps of information: Violet liked peanuts, pretzels, "anything with salt." "David was handy." Nevertheless, Mole and Tilly hoard these infrequent utterances, memorizing them and adding them to their precious store of knowledge. The only tangible keepsake they have is a stack of black and white snapshots that they keep enshrined in a battered cookie tin:

For years, one of Tilly's and my favorite games involved arranging these snapshots on her bedroom floor and making up stories and dialogue to animate the images, the way other children might have done with dolls. These twelve pictures afforded us such latitude in constructing an idea of our parents that we learned not to mind the paucity of Hy's reminiscences; her story we appropriated as well, and privately embellished. Thus, the storm, in mymind,comprised hail, gales of wind, thunder and lightning. The sky was gray-green, the color of the place between yolk and albumen in a hard-boiled egg. The rowboat was read. Our parents wore rain slickers: hers yellow, his navy blue. They washed up on the sand clean and pale, their mouths and eyes closed, their fingers interlaced.

As we got older, our need to flesh out the story grew — not just the costumes, props and blockings, but things we couldn't name, temperament and motivation and, in a way, a moral — and bit by bit, we supplied these elements, too, so seamlessly that they appeared to have been spawned by the story itself....

Eventually all the details we contrived, singly or jointly, mundane or ethereal, combined in a sort of life-giving alchemical reaction so that as the story increased in size it increased in legitimacy. Our own contributions took on such steadfast authority that they melded with fact. It became our own private gospel.

As sole custodians of this latter-day concordance, the sisters have long shared an unchallenged intimacy. But when Hy begins to spruce up the abandoned bungalow the girls think of as "the dead house" with the idea of renting it out for the summer, they recognize the threat to their cherished privacy and voice a united chorus of disapproval. Their attempts to change Hy's mind only serve to introduce the first notes of familial discord, and Mole notices, not for the first time, that Hy has "gone off," put a mental distance between herself and the girls.

The Rouen family arrives with the summer, and reluctantly the sisters begin to take an interest in the new occupants of the dead house. Mole is secretly thrilled to discover a "mussel connection": Bill and Delia Rouen are a husband-and-wife scientific team making a study the local mussel population, and she has long maintained a half-hidden dollhouse of moss and mussel shells on the banks of the Kittiwake. The Rouens explain that they are looking for patterns, hidden, undescribed truths, the "many, many small things" that may one day "become part of the bigger picture." This, too, strikes a chord with Mole: Isn't this what she and Tilly have been doing all these years, trying to complete an elaborate jigsaw puzzle from the flotsam and jetsam of their parents' lives? But when she tries to express her excitement, she finds that Tilly has gone off in her own way, assuming subtle affectations and enforcing a new separateness between them. Worse, in flirting with Walter, the oldest of the four Rouen children, Tilly has blithely offered up the jealously guarded story of their parents' death and, unthinkably, changed the holy writ. Tilly hints darkly of an unsolved mystery, "something fishy" about the affair, in order to catch Walter's interest. And as a variety of excuses to investigate with Walter are contrived — a trip to the library to pore over ten-year-old microfiche, a graveyard excursion to search for their parents' headstones — Mole finds herself gently but unmistakably excluded.

Ultimately, the only mystery revealed is the age-old mystery of coming of age, and the only thing fishy going on is in the dead house itself. Growing up in small-town isolation, neither Mole nor Tilly has ever known a family "in the middle of trouble," and the warning signs — arguments, drinking, and the underlying sexuality of Bill Rouen's banter — while obvious to the reader, are missed by the girls. Cohen parses out hints of the Rouens' troubles over the course of her story, generating a tension that propels it to its denouement. But Heat Lightning's real triumph is the exquisite realization of the intricate dynamic between Mole, Tilly, and Hy, and the achingly real portrayal of that age when the certainties of childhood are replaced by the questions of adolescence.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In what seems an explosion of literary creativity, Cohen, whose provocative nonfiction book Glass, Paper, Beans appeared in February (following the memorable 1993 Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World), has written a haunting first novel that exquisitely captures the perceptions of a young girl on the verge of puberty.

Narrator Mole (for Martha) and her older sister, Tilly, were babies when their parents died trying to rescue boaters in a storm. They were adopted by their loving but taciturn Aunt Hy, who has told them very little of the circumstances in which their parents drowned, so that the girls, closely bonded by their situation, have added details to create their own story about that night. During an oppressively hot summer when the girls are 11 and 12, their carefully constructed version of the world begins to crack. Hy rents the empty house where the girls were born (they call it "the dead house") to the Rouens, married marine biologists who, with their four children, have come to the area to study mussels. Outwardly appealing, the family is subtly dysfunctional. Tilly, suddenly crossing the bridge to adolescence, is drawn to 14-year-old Walter Rouen, even as his father attempts to seduce her. Her burgeoning sexuality loosens her sibling bond, and Mole is hurt, lonely and abandoned, as well as bewildered by adult behavior. "No grown-up around me offered any clear message or instruction," she mourns in a premonitory passage.

Cohen delicately conveys the uncertainty and moodiness of young girls on the verge of puberty. Her sensuous language bursts with charged imagery, as do her descriptions of a rural hamlet whose apparent summertime languor hides simmering emotions. So suspensefully does her story move along that one is somewhat disappointed at the end to find no closure to the events that Mole has been foreshadowing with plaintive gloom. That a small revelation at the end apparently satisfies their natural desire for knowledge about their parents conveys the message that deprivation of their past is somehow no longer important to the sisters. But if Mole doesn't learn much about her past, she does begin to understand her future, and the reader hopes to share more of her life.

Library Journal

Mole and Tilly lost their parents in an accident when they were babies and have been raised by their Aunt Hy in a small town near Lake Pillow. Their parents' death has always been something of a mystery to the girls. The summer Mole is 11 and Tilly is 12, the Rouens rent "the dead house" down the road; soon, they and their four children invade the previously exclusive haunts of Tilly and Mole. As the summer progresses, it becomes clear that the Rouens' marriage is in crisis.

Meanwhile, Tilly begins to exhibit all the signs and symptoms of puberty, to the consternation and confusion of her younger sister. Solid becomes liquid, what is known becomes uncertaineven the stories the girls have made up about their parents' deathand both Mole and Tilly must grapple with a new reality. Vivid description and detail make these characters come alive; Pillow Lake becomes real, and the heat of the summer shimmers throughout the story. Beautifully written and told, this first novel by the author of the acclaimed Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World (LJ 12/93) is recommended for most collections.
--Joanna M. Burkhardt, University of Rhode Island, College. of Continuing Education Library, Providence

Library Journal

Mole and Tilly lost their parents in an accident when they were babies and have been raised by their Aunt Hy in a small town near Lake Pillow. Their parents' death has always been something of a mystery to the girls. The summer Mole is 11 and Tilly is 12, the Rouens rent "the dead house" down the road; soon, they and their four children invade the previously exclusive haunts of Tilly and Mole. As the summer progresses, it becomes clear that the Rouens' marriage is in crisis.

Meanwhile, Tilly begins to exhibit all the signs and symptoms of puberty, to the consternation and confusion of her younger sister. Solid becomes liquid, what is known becomes uncertaineven the stories the girls have made up about their parents' deathand both Mole and Tilly must grapple with a new reality. Vivid description and detail make these characters come alive; Pillow Lake becomes real, and the heat of the summer shimmers throughout the story. Beautifully written and told, this first novel by the author of the acclaimed Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World (LJ 12/93) is recommended for most collections.
--Joanna M. Burkhardt, University of Rhode Island, College. of Continuing Education Library, Providence

School Library Journal

A novel written from the point of view of an adult looking back at a fateful summer. Remarks and conversations that puzzled her as a child become clear, but without the power of recourse. Mole, 11, and her older sister, Tilly, live with their aunt in a small Maine community. Orphaned since they were very young and given a bare-bones account of their parents' drowning, the girls have speculated and romanticized about the tragedy, contriving a secret story that is almost mythical to them. When the Rouens move in nearby, they seem like a perfect family-professional parents with four children. Mole has already developed strong interests in the local plant and wildlife and is drawn to Mrs. Rouen, who is conducting a study of river mussels. A romance develops between Tilly and teenaged Walter Rouen. Mole experiences her sister's growing away from her and is shocked to realize that Tilly is presenting their parents' death in the guise of a mystery to attract the boy. The girls see Mr. Rouen's abuse of his wife and his inappropriate sexual advances toward them, but also his care for and devotion to his children. As lightning often will result in fire, so the sexual tensions between the Rouen couple and between the young people set off confrontations that end in an actual fire in Mole's house. The summer family departs, ending the tension and clearing the air. The climax is dramatic and believable.

--Frances Reiher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

Kirkus Reviews

A first novel by the already much-praised Cohen (Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World, 1993; Glass, Paper, Beans, 1996) stuns with its lean, unadorned artistry as it limns the tale of two preadolescent sisters in their search for the truth about their parents' death, their own past, and the connection that binds themtogether.

Tilly and Mole's parents drowned in the Kittiwake River one stormy night while trying to rescue a boatload of partygoers—or at least that's how the story goes. Now, 11-year-old Mole (real name Martha) and the prettier 12-year-old Tilly have spent the nine years since their parents' death embroidering on this sparse family legend—imbuing their mother and father with invented personalities, passions, and tragic flaws that their guardian, Aunt Hy, and their small-town neighbors have neglected to provide. Over time, Mole has come to consider this story of death the sisters' greatest treasure, and she's outraged when Tilly casually uses it to impress a city boy whose family is vacationing on the lake. The family, renting a house from Aunt Hy for the summer, is headed by a pair of scientists whose marital troubles cast a shadow on Mole and Tilly as well as on their own four children. As Tilly is drawn ever deeper into the vortex of this troubled clan, Mole deals with Tilly's abrupt abandonment of her in exchange for romance by painstakingly collecting clues to the true story of her parents' lives, hoarding and treasuring each shiny bit of information as a potential tool to bring her sister back to her—and to rescue her from the perilous brink of adolescence.

Cohen's taut, unsentimental prose brilliantly evokes Mole's strange imaginaryworld. A radiant coming-of-age story in which every character rings true.