Saints and Sinners, Losers and Winners (Liars and Saints - Maile Meloy)

Member Name: kirstymack80

Product:	Liars and Saints - Maile Meloy
Date:	14/07/05 (139 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: engaging characters, great writing

Disadvantages: none

Yvette and Teddy are married during the war. Their children, Margot and Clarissa are born soon after, two years apart. Teddy remains absent for a good part of their early lives, fighting in Korea. Yvette, alone on a beach with two young children, is approached by a photographer who offers to take their photo. “A man with such a beautiful wife will want a remembrance of her”. Yvette, slightly tipsy from a cocktail, accepts the compliment, but when the photographer returns to the house with the photographs a few days later, he kisses her so hard that his teeth cut her lip.

Racked with guilt for weeks after, Yvette attends confession. But the kiss will haunt her family for years.

* Characters *

Margot is the eldest and most sensible of the children, married to Owen. She desperately wants a child but cannot get pregnant, which is ironic as she had a child at the age of sixteen with her teacher Mr Tucker, who ‘danced like a prince’. She feels her childnessness is a punishment from God after she disowned her baby.

Clarissa is married to Henry, living in Honolulu. She’s the rebel, the bohemian that is unhinged by her religious upbringing. She doesn’t get on with her older sister, but her younger brother, Jamie, adores her and often seeks refuge at her house. He’s easily impressionable, his older sisters no longer around, and his big hero is Father Jack.

* What I thought *

At first I thought the book moved at a cracking pace. And I don’t mean in a good way! In the first four pages, Yvette marries and all of a sudden has two kids under the age of 10. By chapter five, Margot is a teenager and living in France.

I suppose by the blurb on the back (which I’ve summarised in my first paragraph) I thought this would be a story about Yvette and Teddy, or perhaps Yvette and the photographer, returning years after, a la ‘The Bridges of Madison County’. But this is more about the children, growing up in the 60s, amidst the assassination of JFK.

Yvette carries a secret which will probably destroy her marriage to Teddy. However, half way through the book, the story focuses on Jamie, the youngest child. The reader sees Jamie the brother, the son and the father. Tragedy strikes the Santerres when a family member dies and Jamie is left alone with a baby. He is desperate to find his roots – he finds out his life with Yvette and Teddy was a lie and he thinks his future lies elsewhere, away from them.

Beginning in the 1940s and ending in the '90s, this spans several generations of family members, each chapter a mini story in its own right.

* What I liked *

There is an unusual love story that develops which is a tiny part in a book that has so many different layers. At first I couldn’t get attached to any of the characters in the book – while some situations are described very vividly, the key people remain at a distance until the second half of the book when the children are grown up.

I liked the way that it was realistic. The parents (Yvette and Teddy) try to adapt to their children’s way of life, not always approving of their chosen lifestyles. Time moves on at a fast pace and the children (and grandchildren) become the main focus of the story, which inevitably leads back to the past.

Confused yet? ;-)

* Overall *

This book is about different kinds of love – parental, romantic and forbidden. It’s about protecting the family from secrets, it’s about lies and deceit, death and religion. And it’s about coping with immeasurable loss and shattered expectations.

For a book just 260 pages long, this is a brilliant first novel with engaging characters and a family that you begin to care about. The reader is constantly getting to know new characters, and just when you think they have left, they return years later, as if time hasn’t passed.

This is a concise book, sometimes heartbreaking and full of surprises. I didn't want it to end.

* About the author *

Maile Meloy was born in Montana and lives in California. This is her first novel.

RRP £7.99 (paperback)
ISBN 0-7195-6645-2
260 pages

I was lucky enough to find this book in a charity shop for 99p. I’d earlier picked it up in WH Smith at full price, debating whether to buy it (too pricey for less than 300 pages). It’s a fairly recent book, one of Richard and Judy’s summer reads and it was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2005.

Highly recommended and the full five stars.

Thanks for reading.

Summary: A family saga without the 600 pages!