Life in a metaphor

I finished reading Undressing the Moon yesterday, and as expected the novel is an emotional accounting of a woman's experience with breast cancer. Granted, the book is a work of fiction, and although I don't make a habit of regularly reading stories of how individuals grapple with cancer, this one in particular was incredibly well written and poignant.

Greenwood paints a truly striking picture of Piper, the woman who has been literally and figuratively "broken" at three main times in her life: the present in her battle with cancer, when she was a pre-teen and her parents emotionally (and in the case of her mother, also physically) deserted her and her older brother Quinn, and in her early high school years when she has her first serious romantic liaisons (one with a peer Blue Henderson who takes her physical virginity/innocence, and the other with her theatre teacherwho takes her emotional/internal virginity/innocence and whom she then erroneously pins a false claim of rape to and regrets doing so later on).

Greenwood consistently revisits Piper's Mother's fascination with creating artistic pieces out of broken glass, and the characteristics of glass remain a constant metaphor throughout the book... feeling exposed, shattered, looking for wholeness, and finally trying to reach a point of understanding and accepting incompleteness.

While the metaphor is poignant, easy to relate to and visually striking, what I most appreciated about this novel was its blunt yet sensitive style. Piper struggles through finding herself as a woman, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a lover and a cancer patient, and while she does feel the weight and sadness of the painful aspects of the events she's experienced in her life - rather than feel pity for her, we the audience feel the heaviness of her burdens, and are simultaneously relieved when she begins to find peace and acceptance, but also are greatly moved by her ability to not quite rise above her circumstances, but gracefully continue moving on in her life in spite of them.

For me I appreciated the "realness" of this novel - the fact that events were not made overtly horrific or joyful just to juxtapose the good with the bad or to create a false sense of empathy for Piper (we genuinely come to identify with her in a natural way) - and the fact that the book used her cancer as more of a catapult into the idea of feeling broken inside, something many of us have felt at times, as opposed to the more abstract concept of purely facing death (although facing death/coming to accept one's circumstances, does exist within the novel, the book probes deeper and does not put death on a pedestal to be tamed).

At any rate, having not had cancer myself (fortunately) I can't compare this novel to any true feelings on that front, but I can say that as someone who has been majorly ill and had near-death experiences, this book did a truly beautiful job at capturing the things that I too really focused on when in those circumstances - meaningful relationships, the events that never seemed resolved, natural beauty, regret, and love.

Although emotional and sorrowful at times, I would highly recommend this novel.

Of course, you shouldn't take my word for it...go read it for yourself and let us know what you think.

Also, we're trying to decide what we should read for next month. Patricia has put her vote in for something that takes place in New England (as Undressing the Moon did actually, it takes place in VT), has a more uplifting/feel-good theme, and is set in the fall/winter.

Any ideas out there? Any books you have read you would like us to review?

Thanks for reading.