Mourning Ruby

Losing a child is like losing yourself-and for a while that is exactly what happens to Rebecca. She started out life as a foundling, left in a shoebox in the alley behind Vittorio's Italian restaurant. Due to the intervention of the Blessed Virgin, according to her rescuer, she is discovered before becoming food for the rats and subsequently adopted. Unfortunately, she never establishes familial ties with her adopted family and, as an adult, struggles to make a place for herself in the world that feels like home. Rebecca's life is changed for the better when she meets and moves in with Joe. Not her lover, but definitely loved, he changes her life for the good. He even introduces her to her future husband, Adam. Rebecca lives a blissful existence with Joe and Adam and eventually gives birth to beautiful, red-haired, Ruby. For the first time in her life, Rebecca is connected to someone by blood, and she finally begins to feel that she is not alone in the world. Fate, however, has other plans for Rebecca. Ruby dies. Rebecca and Adam are both lost in grief and end up losing each other. They slog through their days trying to stifle their grief, Adam as a neonatologist, seeking ways he could have saved Ruby in every premature baby he treats, and Rebecca as the steadfast assistant of a wealthy hotelier, Mr. Damiano. Her beneficent boss sees Rebecca's grief and finds a way to help her re-invent her life's story. Joe, devastated for his friends and trying to deal with the angst of growing up without his own father, makes a tremendous sacrifice for Rebecca by turning away from his all-consuming historical research and crafting a novel set in World War I of two lovers who might have been Rebecca's mother and his father, binding them as siblings as surely as if they had been born that way. Fiercely emotional, hauntingly sad, and yet joyful in the end, MOURNING RUBY is a story of loss and redemption, grief and grace. Helen Dunmore's skill as a poet has stood her well in creating lyrical, delicate, and passionate prose. It's like watching a ballerina wearing a red or purple tutu-elegant, yet lush. This book is as intelligent as it is bittersweet and destined to become a classic. Reviewed by Kim Anderson Ray of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers

Over three decades may have passed, but the pivotal moment in Rebecca's life still haunts her. Her biological mom left her as a newborn in a shoebox in the alley behind Vittori's restaurant. An onion saves her from becoming rat meal. Her adoptive parents had no idea how to cope with a colic baby that did not sleep through the night; over the years they fed and dressed the kid, but were unable to show any love or affection towards the alley brat. As an adult Rebecca rooms with historian Joe, who treats her like a younger sibling and introduces her to her future husband neonatologist Adam. They have a daughter Ruby, who makes Rebecca feel human for the first time in her life. The next five years are terrific as she and Adam shower Ruby with love. When Ruby dies in a car accident, Rebecca returns to her life of nothingness. Adam leaves her, but she meets Mr. Damiano, who hires her as his assistant while Joe tries to provide her solace with a World War I story about a single mother vowing to raise her child though it means working the brothels at the front. MOURNING RUBY is a poignant, but melancholy character study. The title protagonist lives an extreme roller coaster life starting with the box, followed by the loveless early years; a fine interlude with a friend and a lover; the crescendo starring Ruby; replaced by deep grief and hiding in a "box"; and finally friends trying to help her move on. Helen Dunmore provides a deep look that human means grieving for loved ones but also those who love you are there for you even when you reject them. Harriet Klausner

Stories --- embarrassing, tragic or simply amusing --- provide hours of entertainment at reunions and other family gatherings. Although many of us may take our family stories for granted, they often make up a large part of our personal history and our sense of identity. In her new novel, MOURNING RUBY, Helen Dunmore astutely comments on the power of family stories to provide strength, hope and even healing.Rebecca, the novel's central figure, keenly feels the lack of family stories shaping her own life. Left as a baby in a shoebox outside an Italian restaurant, Rebecca has no real family and no family stories. Only as a young adult can Rebecca make a semblance of a family with her friend and roommate, Joe, an up-and-coming historian who creates a home with Rebecca. His love for her remains platonic, though, since Rebecca has adopted him as a brother rather than as a lover.Rebecca later marries Joe's friend Adam and has a daughter, Ruby. Rebecca's connection to Ruby is even more dramatic than the traditional mother-child bond. At last, in Ruby, Rebecca has a family: "For the first time, I was tied to someone by blood." Rebecca's visceral connection to Ruby makes Ruby's sudden death, described in gut-wrenching detail, even more heartbreaking. I would defy anyone who has a child to read the account of Ruby's death without shedding a tear.Torn apart by their misery in the wake of Ruby's death, Rebecca and Adam separate, both throwing themselves into their work. In the meantime, Joe is a continent away, fruitlessly trying to conduct historical research while living with a woman he does not love. Rebecca is haunted by dreams of Ruby in life and in death, and Adam, a neonatal specialist, seems to try to reverse the past with each premature baby whose life he saves.As she tentatively makes her way back to Adam, Rebecca comes to rely on two stories that have parallels to her own. Her employer, the hotelier Mr. Damiano, tells Rebecca about his youth in his family's traveling circus. And, in a gesture that speaks volumes about his love for her, Joe breaks away from history and turns to fiction, composing a novel that imagines both his own absent father's past and the history of Rebecca's unknowable family tree. This "novel within a novel" comes near the end of MOURNING RUBY and helps Rebecca begin the process of healing her broken family ties.This is a thoughtful, complex novel about the power of story and the importance of family. Readers who enjoy complex novels will enjoy this one, as will readers who relish poetic language. MOURNING RUBY is not an easy novel to read, either emotionally or intellectually, but readers who become absorbed by its web of stories will be richly rewarded. --- Reviewed by Norah Piehl