Night Diving: Understanding Guppies, Mollies, Swordtails and Others

From the book back cover: "Rose Salino is living the perfect lesbian-chic lifestyle in San Francisco. But then she loses both her lover and her job on the same day. Twenty-four hours later, her grandmother dies and so Rose must journey home for the funeral. Once there, she meets up with Jessie, her best friend from childhood - and her very first love. Through the crises she faces, Rose is forced to look at her life and find the courage to create a future that is true to her self and to her heart. Will Rose take the risks necessary to create the life she wants - rather than the life she thinks she's "supposed to have"?" When she was nine Rose's world fell apart as her mother got sick with manic-depression. Now at thirty she is again seeing her carefully controlled world fall apart, and is forced to look at her life. In Night Diving, Rose dives into her past and tells us of her childhood and of growing up with her best friend Jessie, who like her is the product of a dysfunctional family. But the question Rose has to face in the book is how to find the courage to finally take risks, in order to move out of her carefully constructed controlled life into the world of possibilities that a life with Jessie represents. Night Diving deals with issues such as mental illness, sexual abuse and cancer but Esposito manages to keep her writing balanced and with enough sense of humour so that the book doesn't turn into a melodrama. I highly recommend this book.

While dealing with difficult and disturbing issues like breast cancer, incest, alcoholism and homophobia, "Night Diving" is nevertheless not so much a depressing book about victims, as it is a joyous book about survivors. "Night Diving" is an empowering read, which will touch your heart, make you weep and make you laugh. Like all the wonderful, feminist novels from Spinster's Ink, it is a stellar book!

Written in a first person narrative, Night Diving follows thirty year old Rose Salino, as she heads home to Long Island to attend the funeral of her grandmother. While there she runs into her childhood friend and first love, Jessie. Seeing her childhood haunts and her old friend brings up painful memories for Rose as she comes to terms with the effect her childhood fears have had on her as an adult. If all of that sounds like a terrible downer, never fear, Micheline Esposito injects the whole thing with her distinctive wry sense of humor. Even with the serious subject matter at the heart of the book, I found myself laughing out loud through most of it. Micheline Esposito has a way of describing Rose's life that reminded me of David Sedaris and his darkly comedic essays on his wacky life and family. So if you're looking for a book that will make you cry but laugh while you're doing it, give Night Diving a shot. I liked it well enough that I'll be on the lookout for more of Micheline Esposito's work.

In Rose Salino's life, bad things happen in threes: she's dumped by her lover, loses her job (because she worked with her lover at a restaurant she had always considered "ours" - which wasn't), and then her grandmother dies necessitating a flight from San Francisco to her childhood home in Long Island, NY. And so begins a journey in the present as well as in the past. Rose's first person tale is bookended by events in the present, while the bulk of the novel tells the story of her youth. In a crisp, fresh, and often funny voice, she tells of her early struggles with her manic-depressive mother, of feeling alone and outside the pale during her school years, and most of all, of her friendship with Jessie who not only had a screwed up mother similar to Rose's, but also carried hidden wounds of traumatic abuse. Much of Rose's description of her childhood is moving, and with her fine prose, Esposito never lapses into melodrama. "I was nine the first time my mother got sick, leaving me with an emptiness that clawed at me like some little trapped animal. It was as if some faceless man had taken her away in the middle of the night and because I could not yet feel where she ended and I began, had taken me with them. I awoke one morning to find her shell and a hugeness that grew louder and louder and more panicky inside me. The first aloneness" (p. 34). The way Rose attempts to make sense of her world, to grow up, to find a place for herself is by terms touching and comical. I laughed out loud when Rose describes her friend's enormous Newfoundland dog: "She was, I was sure, some mix of black bear and water buffalo, definitely bigger and heavier than me, with long black fur and a mouth I envisioned snapping off my leg in one jagged bloody chomp" (p. 22). Esposito has a delightful sense of timing as well as the ability to evoke character, particularly Rose's, in ways that kept me glued to the book. For instance, at her grandmother's funeral, she nervously connects back up with childhood friend Jessie, and thinks this: "I can't even tell you why I'm so damn nervous except that I don't know where to start. You can't start from where you left off because that was a dozen years ago and you end up feeling like William Randolph Hearst clutching a sled, rocking back and forth in some dark room, whispering, 'Rosebud, Rosebud'" (p. 116). Esposito's ability to juxtapose flashes of comedy into the story is illuminating in the way that unexpected lightning allows for brief glimpses into dark places. By the time the events of the past catch up with the quandaries and disasters of the present, it's clear that Rose has the ability to rise above her circumstances-but will she make the right choices in order to do so? She has the possibility of a life with Jessie, but can she let go of her hang-ups and really communicate with the people she loves? "Love is knowing a person's tender spots, the places where the skin is transparent, not fully formed, like the clear mem

I happened on to this at a local library. I found myself quickly wrapped up in this book. The situations and dialogues are very believable and realistic. I found that it rushed the ending a little and some of the earlier details were sacrificed, like she had more to say but had to pare it down. However, I am anxiously awaiting Esposito's second effort.