The Effects of Light
by Miranda Beverly-Whitemore
reviewed by Byron Merritt
Kate Scott is a young, successful college professor with an unknown past. She has only one good friend at the east coast university where she teaches (a gay educator who injects some much needed humor into the story), lives a solitary life in a dorm-style setting, and has recently fallen in love with Samuel Blake, the new art history teacher at the school. But Kate’s past can’t stay hidden any longer. Samuel stumbles (literally) upon her darkest secret when he asks Kate to attend one of his classes, and he begins discussing the case of child pornography that surrounded the photographing of two young girls by a famous artist in the 1960's and 70's. Come to find out, Kate was one of those girls . . . and her name isn’t Kate at all.
Myla Wolfe (Kate’s real name) must return to Portland, Oregon and face her worst fears: what had happened to her sister, Prudence (then thirteen). We learn early on in the novel that Pru somehow died, but the author—Miranda Whitemore—eases us into Myla’s life, and the nightmare surrounding the horrific day in which she lost her young sibling.
What drew me into this story was the authors lyrical prose. On almost every page Mrs. Whitemore can pull you into the emotions that her characters feel; not an easy thing to do. At times, I felt as though I were reading one very long poetic verse told against the backdrop of these peoples’ lives. So I’d give this first time novelist an “A+” for style. Beautiful.
Where I had difficulty was with the overly-long story line and minimal payoff at the end. Now some readers might enjoy the emotional heartstrings that the author plucks away at (and, quite honestly, I didn’t mind it all that much either), but I think the “wait for it...here it comes...wait... it’s still coming....here it comes...wait a little longer” style of writing grew a bit wearisome. She developed the characters nicely, so dragging us along on every single road-trip that Myla/Kate takes was unnecessary.
There’s also a critical piece missing at the end of story that I’m sure the author struggled with; that being the whereabouts of the famous photographer who took the nude images of Myla and Prudence. She left it open, not letting us know either way what had truly happened to her. That kind of left me wanting. I don’t expect EVERYTHING to be spelled out for me, but this was a pretty pivotal character in the story, so tying up that loose end would’ve been nice. Now I’m left guessing: “Did she kill herself in a funk of depression?” “Is she alive somewhere, doing some other form of art? Painting perhaps?” “Maybe she’s in an asylum somewhere.”
But even with these issues, the story is told in such an artistic style that I’d seriously recommend this book to those authors who have trouble with their descriptions of characters emotions. I’d tell them, “See! This is how you do it!”
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| Revision Date: 31 May 2005 |
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