- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Viking; First Edition edition (25 Sep 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0670914495
- ISBN-13: 978-0670914494
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.8 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,321,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Mourning Ruby
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Described on its jacket as resembling "a Russian Doll", Helen Dunmore's Mourning Ruby is certainly more of an assemblage of interconnected tales than a full novel. It's a work that plays the old "stories within stories" game; there are quotes from poems (Mandelstam, Byron, Dickinson and some of Dunmore's own pieces) and folk songs and nearly the last third of the book is given over to shards of a novel in progress written by one of the characters. As in Talking to the Dead and With Your Crooked Heart, the main protagonists here--Rebecca, her husband Adam, and Joe, her old flatmate, a Stalin-obsessed writer--form another of Dunmore's intriguing sexual/sibling triangles.
As the title confirms though, it's the death of Rebecca and Adam's child, Ruby, in a road accident that dominates. In the depiction of this horrific incident, Dunmore at one point breaks into verse, crystallising in just a few sparse, stream of consciousness lines Rebecca's agony as, impotently, she watches the tragedy unfold: "She always stops at roads, she's never run into a road, but look how fast she's going Adam, she's too far ahead, the gap between them, stop Ruby, stop Ruby, stop Rubystop."
Rebecca's loss is even greater because she is herself a lost child, a foundling who was abandoned in a shoebox outside an Italian restaurant. But, if this is a book about the many permutations of loss, it is equally about creativity, artistic as well as biological. Through Rebecca's encounters with her boss, Mr Damiano, the former circus impresario turned hotelier, and Joe's "story", Dunmore salutes, through the very medium of fiction itself, the healing power of the imagination. --Travis Elborough
Review
Intensely emotional, fiercely intelligent. ("Publishers Weekly," starred review) Gorgeous...powerful...nuanced, extraordinary. ("Detroit Free-Press") A must-read. ("Harper's Bazaar")
--This text refers to the
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First Sentence
She dodged into the yard with me in her arms, tucked up in a shoebox. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
She dodged into the yard with me in her arms, tucked up in a shoebox. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Sometimes I love Helen Dunmore, especially Burning Bright, but I must say this isn't one of those times. Parts of it are wonderful, especially those concerning her boss Mr. Damiano. But the character of her friend Joe drags it down. He never becomes more than an artistic convention and the "book within a book," his novella, was, well, cringemakingly awful. If it had been at the beginning rather than the end of the book, I doubt if I'd have read the entire book.
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The structure of this wonderful book is complex, but Dunmore's poetic prose flows so gracefully across the pages, that it quite simply takes you by the hand and leads you gently but surely through its rich layers of stories within stories within stories without putting a step wrong.
The main story is about a mother (herself an abandoned child) and father trying to deal with the death of their young daughter. The awful moment when Ruby races from one parent to another into the path of an oncoming car is heartstopping in its shocking finality. It reminded me of the equally shocking moment in Ian McKewn's 'A Child In Time', when a father, out shopping, suddenly realises that his child has disappeared. In both cases the reader is overwhelmed by the absence of this small person whose energy spilled onto the page only a moment ago, but now is gone. As that absence fills their lives, so it spreads its influence across the whole book and its cast of characters both 'real' and fictional - and while the layering of stories means that there are a large number of characters (and voices) in this book, I felt that I knew and cared for even the most minor of them.
Mourning Ruby is beautifully crafted and takes the reader on an emotional and searching journey. Although it is laced with grief it is also about hopes and dreams. This book is not, in the end, about death, its about the joy and pain of living.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Helen Dunmore never fails to amaze with her unique skill of creating poetry out of prose - "Mourning Ruby" is one of the best books I have read all year, and there have been many!
There are several stories running through one main tale: that of a mother and father mourning their dead child. But theirs is not the only tale of loss and grief. Dunmore manages to make even the most minor of characters live and breathe, and the ending, surprisingly, is uplifting and positive; something you don't expect throughout the book. Read it once for the enjoyment of the story, then go back again and revel in the words, strung together like gems on a necklace.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Depressing
This is my first Helen Dunmore and I have to say it will be my last. I can't recall a more depressing and dull book. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Bunty
Not Dunmore's best but still beautifully written
Dunmore certainly adds dark or disturbing elements to her novels and perhaps this why I enjoy her novels so much. Read more
Published 6 months ago by J. Willis
Mediocre
Ruby, the only child of Rebecca and Adam, has been dead for several years. Adam is a neonatologist who works with dying babies, and despite living with Rebecca seems estranged from... Read more
Published on 12 May 2009 by Captain Pugwash
Without Roots.
Helen Dunmore is a fine writer who draws deeply on that sense of isolation that many of us feel from time to time. Read more
Published on 14 Dec 2006 by Lisa Fuller
heartbraking and brilliant
This is the first book I have read by Helen Dunmore. At first I was confused by the fragmented structure and couldn't see how each thread of the plot tied in with the others. Read more
Published on 5 Nov 2006 by lydia mayger
Mourning Ruby
Despite being a huge fan of Helen Dunmore, I was slightly
perplexed by this novel. Despite the beautiful poetic style
of writing, the various strands did not appear to... Read more
perplexed by this novel. Despite the beautiful poetic style
of writing, the various strands did not appear to... Read more
Published on 19 Aug 2005 by Mrs. Jeann F. Howell
Beautiful and sad
This is the first novel of Dunmore's I have read, and I will certainly be reading more. The central concern of the book could have lent itself to sentimentality, but it is more... Read more
Published on 22 Jan 2005 by paperlady
a read jewel
Helen Dunmore has a vivid mind in Mourning Ruby. A tale of love and loss, unrequited futures and relationships missing a beat. Read more
Published on 12 Oct 2003 by mfl
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