The Mourners' Bench: A Novel

By Susan Dodd

Book Overview

Thirty-year-old Leandra leads a solitary existence on an island in North Carolina, earning a modest living by fixing broken dolls. But her quiet, isolated life takes an unexpected turn when her sister's husband, Wim, appears, a man she has not seen for ten years, since their urgent love affair ended in tragedy. Wim, now dying of cancer, feels the need to see Leandra one last time. In alternating, distinctly American voices -- one the twang of a New England Yankee, the other a gentle Southern drawl -- these two characters tell a wistful, wonderfully evoked story, from their first meeting, when Leandra was summoned to Boston to care for her pregnant, depressed sister, to the growing passion that led them beyond common sense and caution. As the narrative alternates between past and present, Leandra and Wim lay claim to the love they've denied themselves and each other. With a sure sense of language and the kind of detail that rings with truth, Susan Dodd creates characters who will resonate in the reader's mind long after their tale reaches its inevitable end. Soft-spoken, sensitive, and deeply moving, The Mourners' Bench is literary fiction at its best, a powerfully eloquent novel of love, loss, regret, and rediscovery.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688157998
• ISBN13: 9780688157999
• Release Date: July 1998
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Lyrical prose, quiet emotion, profound in its impact

This book is a gem. The words literally call out to you to read them aloud. The two narratives flow together seamlessly, weaving in and out of the past as we learn bits and pieces of the story. The restraint Dodd uses to color the love affair is brilliant. As anyone who has ever lost someone--whether to love gone wrong or to death--knows the color of grief is mostly gray. To those reviewers that think this couple lack passion, I say that you weren't paying attention. This was passionate love in one of its purest forms. A deeply moving and wonderfully written book.

Lost Love Briefly Recaptured

Leandra lives a quiet life in North Carolina working as a doll repairer. This plays a symbolic importance in the book, as Leandra gives the dolls new lives with restores clothes and pieces. As the book begins her terminally ill brother-in-law, Wim, pays a visit to Leandra in the hopes of spending his last days with her, his long-time love. Ten years earlier, a very young Leandra was summoned to Massachusetts to help care for her beautiful, difficult and distant sister Pamela, who had fled their country background and re-fashioned herself as the sophisticated wife of Wim, a college professor many years her senior. Pamela was cold and often cruel to both her husband and sister, and bitter about her pregnancy. Leandra and Wim were drawn together in the face of Pamela's rejection of them, and as the pregnancy came to a tragic end, the young Leandra found herself preoccupied with Wim, who paced the floor outside her room each night. Soon, Pamela's behavior became more and more irrational and violent, and while Wim and Leandra were out one night, she ended her life. The chasm of grief and shock was too difficult for either Wim or Leandra to cross and they separated, until the time of the novel's opening. The novel is told from both Wim and Leandra's point of view, with Wim's sophisticated and intellectual and Leandra's quiet, wise, and spiritual. Ultimately it is Wim's illness and death that heals both of them. This is a beautifully rendered and deeply touching story.

A powerful book of love and human kindness

The Mourners' Bench is a "must read" for anyone who has ever loved another, nursed someone who is dying or just wants to feel something good way down deep. The sad parts of the book are sad in a good way-the way that lets you feel how powerful love can be and how easily human kindness eases all passings.

Never wanted it to end

This novel quietly unfolds and wins the reader over with its beautiful prose and tender story. Susan Dodd uses restraint to tell a love story without being overly sentimental.

American literature at its best.

Susan Dodd's new novel is beautifully written. It reaches the heart and respects the intellect, something that most novels today do not do. She has mastered her art with a wonderful story.