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Spelling Mississippi Marnie Woodrow Books

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Spelling Mississippi Marnie Woodrow Books

This is one of those books that stay with you for years and years. One of those books you not only can't put down, but are anxious knowing that there isn't a sequel (yet!). I found that I read the last couple of chapters very slowly because I just didn't want the story to end. The characters came alive on the page, and streets in New Orleans that these characters travelled became second nature to me - my life was fully entrenched in this book while I was reading it. I'm so glad to have come across this and hope that Ms. Woodrow has another one in print soon.


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Spelling Mississippi Marnie Woodrow Books Reviews

The story is about Cleo, but not only about Cleo. It is also about Madeline, who has this thing with jumping into the Mississippi and try to swim there. Cleo witnesses Madeline's first (actually, we find out later that it is her second) attempt to swim the river. Cleo becomes obsessed trying to find out what happened to Madeline, after she finds out that Madeline did not die from her swimming. In her quest to find Madeline, Cleo tours around The French Quarter in New Orleans, and the author has done a nice job descriping the city, the streets and the bars. While Cleo is searching, we also follow the life of Madeline, and via flasbacks we learn about their past and their families. Spelling Mississippi is a good book, but it moves a little slow, and is in some parts rather predictable. There are many cliches in the book, and that becomes a bit annoying, but there are small surprises here and there. All in all a nice, but somewhat average, read.
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.
This was terrific. A quiet, slow story set in New Orleans, so that kind of matches the pace. Cleo is on vacation from Toronto. Madeline lives in the city with her husband. The lives of these two women, and their pasts, their connections to their mothers, have been running separate courses but are fated to merge. Sort of like a braided stream--more so than the mighty Mississippi of the title. All these parts are connected yet separated. Then they come together. The writing is first rate. And for writers, the POV is omniscient, and done well, though it took a bit to get used to. I got a little confused between the two women's stories at first. Lesbian stories might not be the best place for omniscient POV. With male and female main characters, it'd be easier to keep track. I really connected with these characters, all of them. I had no idea how this would turn out. This is not lesfic, and I wasn't familiar with the writer. Could I trust her not to throw the lesbian storyline under the bus for straight readers? She held out to the bitter end, but it ended very satisfyingly. Another masterful debut novel.
This is one of those books that stay with you for years and years. One of those books you not only can't put down, but are anxious knowing that there isn't a sequel (yet!). I found that I read the last couple of chapters very slowly because I just didn't want the story to end. The characters came alive on the page, and streets in New Orleans that these characters travelled became second nature to me - my life was fully entrenched in this book while I was reading it. I'm so glad to have come across this and hope that Ms. Woodrow has another one in print soon.