Around Again

This was the first book I read by this author. I loved it. It's been a long time since the end of a novel made me cry. I've since read Shea's other books and have enjoyed them very much, but Around Again remains my favorite.

Accomplished New England author Suzanne Strempek Shea's most recent novel, "Around Again," presents convicing and evocative evidence that of life's most significant battles, the wars we wage inside ourselves are the most important. The novel features a conflicted protagonist, Robyn Panek, who must return to a family farm which, some twenty years earlier, produced a summer that sundered her attachment to an innocent and hopeful past. Priding herself on her ability to discern that which is real from that which is fake, Robyn must confront not only the unfulfilled status of her present life, but also the traumatizing memories of events which shattered not only friendship and romance, but the very idea of family continuity and personal grace."Around Again" is a significant departure for the author, whose three previous books possessed an aura of kindness and warmth for the female protagonists whose Polish identity provided nurturing support against life's disappointments. In this talented and provocative novel, Shea depicts a protagonist whose middle-aged existence is one of loneliness, silent anguish, and subdued frustration over past betrayal. Robyn Panek emerges as a fully-rendered character, whose hurt and isolation compel our compassion, whose blasted hopes foster our admiration for her earnest determination to make sense of her past. This is a more somber, sophisticated and adult novel, rich in characterization and deftly presented in a series of cross-cutting chapters which alternate between Robyn as a late adolescent and as a middle-aged woman. Robyn Panek, responding to her uncle's request to close down his beloved family farm in western Massachusetts after he has suffered a near-fatal illness, learns that life does not work out "neat and clean and tidy." A central metaphor of the novel revolves around the future of a set of ponies, whose backs have carried decades of riders and whose being is central to Robyn's memory of the past and her self-definition today. She must confront the memory of Lucy Dragon, whose suicidal impulses some twenty years ago led to the explosion of all that Robyn held dear. The reflective Robyn comes to realize that "what happens to people between there and here you can never really know."Suzanne Strempek Shea movingly depicts adolescent friendship through Lucy and Robyn. Reluctantly, slowly, unknowingly, Robyn comes to love Lucy. "The flight and exposition, the self-love and automatic hate...all this shone back at me...So there was no way I could miss or ignore the truth. That looking at this crazy girl, clearly I was also seeing myself." The relationship between Robyn and Frankie, her first love, brims with unabashed optimism; how Robyn deals with its abrupt transformation perhaps is the single strongest aspect of the novel.This important work, symbolically rich and engrossing in both its narrative and characterizations, signals a new path for its author. Rightfully heralded as a vibrant voice for Po

I loved Hoopi Shoopi Donna and Lily Of the Valley, therefore I up picked up Around Again expecting another entertaining read. What I got instead was a book so heartwarming that I felt I had to share the good news with others. The final pages were truely beautiful.

I'm a big fan of Suzanne Strempek Shea, and this novel is no exception. It's a bit different in tone from her last book, more melancholy and musing, but very powerful and moving. The basic plot is one many 30- or 40-somethings can relate to: after her uncle's grave illness, Robyn returns to his farm to help him sell the property and to honor one of his last wishes - that she run the farm and its pony-ride ring for one final summer. Shea skillfully depicts the mix of emotions and memories that inevitably face the one who must pack up after an ailing or deceased relative. "Around Again" gains additional complexity, though, in exploring Robyn's personal history at the farm: the unexpected ending to her last visit, the summer she was 17. It's a shame Ms. Shea is not more widely known or appreciated; she's an extremely talented writer and should not merely be pigeon-holed as the "Polish-American Amy Tan." "Around Again" does capture dead on the nuances of being a 2nd or 3rd generation Polish-American, but the cultural backdrop is really secondary to a universally-applicable story told with lyrical elegance and deep emotion.

I couldn't put Suzanne Strempek Shea's books down. A friend loaned me the first- and I was hooked and read them all within a month after being too busy to read for a year. I got the next two at the library and was thrilled when I spotted her latest in the bookstore. Shea describes her characters and the landscape so clearly, you feel like you are living her life. She is able to go back and forth from childhood memories to the present so smoothly you feel like a time traveler. After all, isn't this how most of us live- partly in the present, and affected by our past? How many of you knew someone in high school who had a dramatic affect on your life? Her descriptions of Western Mass are right on. She captures the nostalgia for the 60s and loss of farm land and open space.