The Mourners' Bench

This book is a gem. The words literally call out to you to read them aloud. The two narratives flow together seamlessly, weaving in and out of the past as we learn bits and pieces of the story. The restraint Dodd uses to color the love affair is brilliant. As anyone who has ever lost someone--whether to love gone wrong or to death--knows the color of grief is mostly gray. To those reviewers that think this couple lack passion, I say that you weren't paying attention. This was passionate love in one of its purest forms. A deeply moving and wonderfully written book.

Leandra lives a quiet life in North Carolina working as a doll repairer. This plays a symbolic importance in the book, as Leandra gives the dolls new lives with restores clothes and pieces. As the book begins her terminally ill brother-in-law, Wim, pays a visit to Leandra in the hopes of spending his last days with her, his long-time love. Ten years earlier, a very young Leandra was summoned to Massachusetts to help care for her beautiful, difficult and distant sister Pamela, who had fled their country background and re-fashioned herself as the sophisticated wife of Wim, a college professor many years her senior. Pamela was cold and often cruel to both her husband and sister, and bitter about her pregnancy. Leandra and Wim were drawn together in the face of Pamela's rejection of them, and as the pregnancy came to a tragic end, the young Leandra found herself preoccupied with Wim, who paced the floor outside her room each night. Soon, Pamela's behavior became more and more irrational and violent, and while Wim and Leandra were out one night, she ended her life. The chasm of grief and shock was too difficult for either Wim or Leandra to cross and they separated, until the time of the novel's opening. The novel is told from both Wim and Leandra's point of view, with Wim's sophisticated and intellectual and Leandra's quiet, wise, and spiritual. Ultimately it is Wim's illness and death that heals both of them. This is a beautifully rendered and deeply touching story.

The Mourners' Bench is a "must read" for anyone who has ever loved another, nursed someone who is dying or just wants to feel something good way down deep. The sad parts of the book are sad in a good way-the way that lets you feel how powerful love can be and how easily human kindness eases all passings.

This novel quietly unfolds and wins the reader over with its beautiful prose and tender story. Susan Dodd uses restraint to tell a love story without being overly sentimental.

Susan Dodd's new novel is beautifully written. It reaches the heart and respects the intellect, something that most novels today do not do. She has mastered her art with a wonderful story.