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Impossible by Nancy Werlin
Dec. 29th, 2009 05:57 pmLucy Scarborough’s mother, Miranda, went mad and disappeared immediately after Lucy was born, though she’s frequently reappeared in Lucy’s life since, but never in a pleasant way. When Lucy is 17, an evil elf masquerading as a social worker who works with Lucy’s foster mother possesses Lucy’s prom date and makes him rape her. When the date is free of the possession, he’s so horrified (presumably thinking he did it because he was drunk, and not because he was possessed by an evil elf) that he commits suicide. Soon after, Lucy discovers that she’s pregnant.
Ok, all that actually seems quite tame and sensible when actually reading the book.
Anyway, Lucy is descended from the woman in the ballad “Scarborough” Fair,” who is tasked with three impossible tasks by a presumably spurned lover. Here, the spurned lover is an elf and when human woman he wanted, Fenella, rejected him and took a human lover instead, he cursed her so that all the women of her descent would get pregnant at seventeen, have a baby at eighteen, and then go insane and aimlessly wander around.
I tend to love family curses and women who break them, especially when the curses are based on myth and folklore, but this one doesn’t quite work. Werlin plays up the mother/daughter aspect by having both Miranda’s diaries and Lucy’s foster mother help her with the curse, not to mention her best friend/True Love, but the result is that Lucy herself seems rather passive about breaking the curse, which everyone is surprisingly accepting of. And while the date rape and its aftermath are handled well, though we never see much of how anyone outside of Lucy’s immediate circle reacts to “pregnant by your prom date who died ten minutes after sex,” but the book is overall dismissive of both rape and mental illness as effects of the curse, plus the whole “women can only be heroes and break curses if they’ve been raped” thing,.
And overall interesting idea and generally good, but it could have been better, and handled various aspects better. Though I should mention that, like me, my sister-in-law was captured by the beautiful cover, so I gave it to her to read when I finished it. She reads very little of this type of fiction, and loved the 140 or so pages she read before my nephews woke up from their naps.
Ok, all that actually seems quite tame and sensible when actually reading the book.
Anyway, Lucy is descended from the woman in the ballad “Scarborough” Fair,” who is tasked with three impossible tasks by a presumably spurned lover. Here, the spurned lover is an elf and when human woman he wanted, Fenella, rejected him and took a human lover instead, he cursed her so that all the women of her descent would get pregnant at seventeen, have a baby at eighteen, and then go insane and aimlessly wander around.
I tend to love family curses and women who break them, especially when the curses are based on myth and folklore, but this one doesn’t quite work. Werlin plays up the mother/daughter aspect by having both Miranda’s diaries and Lucy’s foster mother help her with the curse, not to mention her best friend/True Love, but the result is that Lucy herself seems rather passive about breaking the curse, which everyone is surprisingly accepting of. And while the date rape and its aftermath are handled well, though we never see much of how anyone outside of Lucy’s immediate circle reacts to “pregnant by your prom date who died ten minutes after sex,” but the book is overall dismissive of both rape and mental illness as effects of the curse, plus the whole “women can only be heroes and break curses if they’ve been raped” thing,.
And overall interesting idea and generally good, but it could have been better, and handled various aspects better. Though I should mention that, like me, my sister-in-law was captured by the beautiful cover, so I gave it to her to read when I finished it. She reads very little of this type of fiction, and loved the 140 or so pages she read before my nephews woke up from their naps.
