Mourning Ruby (Hardcover)

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.

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.

Mourning Ruby sets experience rolling, remembering it like a film on loop. It’s said that our memory never forgets a single frame of our life. Yet we live our memory through the stories it creates, editing and mixing a million and one emotions to a few scenarios.

Rebecca is Dunmore’s voice. She is born to a mysterious mother who abandons her new born in a shoebox outside the back door of an Italian restaurant. This is Rebecca’s history as she seeks to recover where she belongs and her place in the world. That past is beyond her reach, but it transpires that her one hope of rebuilding a present is torn from her by the tragic death of her daughter Ruby. This leads to the breakdown of her marriage and a realisation of importance of the enigmatic, intellectual lynchpin Joe, a former flatmate, Stalin biographer, who introduces her to life and culture and cooking. And Mr Damiano, her hotel owner boss, with a circus past that mixes tragedy and loss, romance and self motivation who Rebecca finds so elusive and awe-inspiring. And it is his story that is the most beautifully told, rising above misfortune, that binds the whole plot. She hears it and then sleeps for a day and a half. She is almost reborn. He becomes Rebecca’s necessary (god) father.

Mourning Ruby is a book about stories telling us how it is, it is a book about missing reality and having to be told to be reminded. It’s heartfelt and beautifully written, uplifting and sad and introducing the tricky confusion of intimacy with sexuality. Why sometimes to find true meaning in our lives it helps to find someone to tell us.

It is not a straightforward meander through a set plot. It is clever with its literary machinations; poetry introducing prose for each chapter; stories within stories.

Sweep through it and enjoy. It’s worth it.