Reviewing ... DON'T YOU REMEMBER? |
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This review was printed 10-1-07 in BOOKLIST (national publication of the American Library Association) Don’t You Remember? Lyon, George Ella (author). Aug. 2007. 216p. EvaMedia/Motes, paperback, $17 (0-9778745-6-7). 809. REVIEW. First published October 1, 2007 (Booklist). This is a gorgeous and deeply unsettling book. When she was five years old, Lyon, now known primarily as a fine children’s book writer, was in Bath, New York, on the way home to Kentucky from Niagara Falls. She knew things and recalled things that she couldn’t have known about the town, terrifying her parents. Many years later, when her brother and parents recalled the story, she wanted to find out how she knew. Focusing her fierce intelligence on genealogical research in New York State and in Wales, she learns what she can through conventional sources and then undergoes sessions with a past-life therapist. There was a person, whose name was (and wasn’t) Jane Grace, who bore a stillborn child, who was a schoolteacher, who emigrated, pregnant, to Wales. This person seemed to have found a way to communicate through Lyon. The writer lays it all out, allowing us to see and draw our own conclusions. What she also does is write with passionate clarity about the life of stories and the telling of lives, about what writers do and how they work. She quotes her younger son, age three: “I will read you a story. Actually. Then. So. The end!” — GraceAnne A. DeCandido |
