Coming Up for Air: A Novel

"Coming Up For Air" (August 2011) takes places largely in the Buckhead area of Atlanta, Georgia, where Ellie Eddington lives a neat, well-to-do life with her husband and one child away at college. From the beginning, however, we learn that she doesn't sit quite as comfortably into her surroundings. On the surface, life amongst her family and family friends is well-groomed and polished, but lurking below is an angst easily recognized by anyone who has ever felt displaced in life. When Ellie's mother dies, she learns her ex-boyfriend and first love, Hutch, has been creating an exhibit to pay homage to women cited for their charitable and social contributions, including her mother. Ellie discovers that her mother, who had always kept a stiff and somewhat cold demeanor, had actually been a passionate, anti-racist, activist in Alabama during the early 1960s. What could account for the transformation of this woman who, later in life, appears to focus on status only? Ellie comes across her mother's journal and decides to visit Alabama with her ex-boyfriend. Together they research her mother's role in the very turbulent years in southern history, the Freedom bus ride, desegregation protests. Piece by piece Ellie comes to understand how her mother, whom she loved very much, had been two different people: the passionate, free-spirited one of her youth and the one she had cultivated herself to be...and the reason she had done so. Ellie is driven to understand this, because not only did her mother control many of the choices she herself had made in life, but there are parallels in the two women's lives. Ellie has come to a crossroad in her marriage, especially with the reappearance of her first love, and she begins to feel her authentic self rising up out of the drowned existence she's suffered for two decades. Patti Callahan Henry's prose is beautifully crafted in a way that reveals the underpinnings of the character's actions. How a mother feels when they look at their college-aged daughter, a mirror of their younger self, for example, or the suffocation one feels with a manipulative partner, are written almost poetically, drawing true empathy from the reader. As the story unfolds, Patti Callahan Henry has masterfully layered the elements with symbolism and themes that any admirer of southern literature would love. She illustrates how past history can reveal truths; how people often lock their hearts away, only for them to burst forth later in mid-life, forced to "come up for air." I recommend "Coming Up For Air" to anyone who likes romance as long as they are willing to dig deeper than the physical aspects of love. You won't find any torrid affairs or bodice ripping action in "Coming Up For Air." I also recommend the book to anyone who loves southern literature. The story is contemporary, but certainly hits on classic themes. It is literary fiction, too, as it deals heavily with the angst of being imperfect, being human.

Good book