Book Review: Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea
20 Jan 2012 2 Comments
in New Release Reviews Tags: coming of age, fiction, mother daughter relationship, new england
Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea by Morgan Callan Rogers (pub date 1/19/12)
This is a book about the meaning of the mother-daughter relationship, and the devastation felt when that relationship is lost. Set in beautiful coastal Maine during the 1960s, Red Ruby Heart is both a coming-of-age story and a story about the strength of the human spirit.
Twelve-year-old Florine has lived a pretty sheltered life in her rural Maine town. She has two loving parents, a doting grandmother, and a spirited best friend. The most drama she experienced in her young life so far was when she and her friends got into trouble for accidentally starting a fire at a neighbor’s summer home. Then things in Florine’s life begin to go wrong when her mother goes on a weekend getaway with a friend and fails to return. Her mother’s absense begins to affect her family in different ways, and Florine experiences a storm of emotions. She rages against the mother whom she sees as having abandoned her, yet is still pained by her love for her.
Red Ruby Heart is both tragic and uplifting. It’s the story of a girl forced to grow up early, set in a time period when a generation of women were growing up and reclaiming their independence. We are sad to see Florine enter into womanhood without her mother’s guidance, but feel her happiness and pain as she struggles to reclaim her identity without defining herself by her relationship with her mother. Rogers manages to capture the wide range of feelings that teenage girls experience (the joy, the heartbreak, the uncertainty) and creates a dynamic character that readers can sympathize with. The book concludes with a bittersweet ending that is both fitting and memorable.
There are a lot of coming-of-age stories out there, but this is one of the good ones. Though it will likely be classified as “chick lit,” I think this is a story that men and women can equally enjoy.
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