Spelling Mississippi

By Marnie Woodrow

Book Overview

Rich in the detailed nuances of the human heart, and swimming in the decadent atmosphere of New Orleans, Spelling Mississippi is a seductive, liberating novel about the ties that bind -- and those... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0676974325
• ISBN13: 9780676974324
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Vintage Books Canada
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant novel

FROM THE BOOK BACK COVER: Cleo, a Canadian on holiday in New Orleans, is sitting alone on a French Quarter wharf late one November night, dreamily watching the lazy progress of the Mississippi. When a woman clad in full evening dress, from rhinestone tiara to high heels, takes a running leap into the river's chocolate swell, Cleo is more than a little astonished. She watches the water, then turns and runs, mistakenly assuming the jumper is dead. But Madeline, it turns out, is not bent on suicide. She is irresistibly drawn to water, as is Cleo, who was conceived during the great flood in Florence in 1966. The rea ppearance of the mysterious river-swimmer a few nights later on the late evening news triggers Cleo's determination to find her. She pounds the quaint streets of New Orleans, city of cheap bourbon, rich turtle soup, magnolia breezes and "A Streetcar Named Desire". When at last Cleo finds Madeline - hiding out in a tenement studio with a grand piano and an assortment of "borrowed" lawn ornaments - both women make some startling self-discoveries. "Spelling Mississippi" is Marnie Woodrow's first novel, and it is a brilliant and entrancing book about letting go of a traumatic past and trying to conceive a future that may possibly involve love. Madeline and Cleo, the two main characters, have both come to New Orleans trying to escape their pasts. Starting from the accidental meeting of Cleo and Madeline in the beginning of the book, we follow both protagonists separately as the narrative shifts between each woman, showing us why they've avoid dealing with their past - "No point thinking about the past, that old swamp of bad memories and foolish notions" -, why their past still haunts their present, and how they finally begin to deal with it. Woodrow plays with the notion of fate and inevitability so that it seems obvious to the reader that they were always meant to meet. So when they finally find each other, the love story between Cleo - who doesn't plan to fall in love - and Madeline - who thinks her heart has been removed from her life - comes as no surprise. Central in the book's imagery is water with its constant presence and its various symbolic meanings in both main characters' lives: freedom, possibilities, forgetfulness, disaster, love, grief. When they finally meet Cleo quotes W.H. Auden to Madeline, in a fundamental phrase within the novel: "Thousands have lived without love, not one without water." Also important in the book is the setting. This book is also a confession of love for New Orleans, and the city is almost treated as a character as Woodrow writes on Cleo's connection to New Orleans "It's the smell of it, and the light. It's the way it seems utterly female in character (...)" and of New Orleans haunting people when they leave. This book will stay with you long after it is finished, haunting you like Cleo and Madeline haunt each other's thoughts at the end of the book. Very highly recommended.

Very sweet

love story, with a magic realist edge. A pattern of coincidences resonating with the principal characters' long-buried pasts, brings them together in the present. It's Literature with a capital "L," so the narrative is often oblique, and the adventure is largely an internal one. New Orleans is as big a protagonist as the two beautiful women who meet there. I hope to hear more from this captivating writer--it worries me that her earlier publications seem unobtainable.