Promises, Promises

Don't you just hate it when a book promises one thing but gives you something else?  It could be that the story seems to be going in one direction but then ends up somewhere entirely different by the end.  It could be that it starts out with the promise of being something amazing, but falls flat in the end.  Tennyson, by Lesley M. M. Blume is one of those books.

It's 1932, the Depression.  Things are evening out among people everywhere...  On the banks of the Mississippi, Tennyson Fontaine, and her sister, Hattie, play endless games of hide-and-seek . . . But when their mother doesn't come home one day, and their father sets off to find her, the sisters are whisked away to Aigredoux, once one of the grandest houses in Louisiana, now a vine-covered ruin.

Their caretaker, Aunt Henrietta, becomes convinced that she can use the girls to save the family's failing fortunes.  But then Tennyson discovers the truth about Aigredoux, the secrets that have remained locked deep within its decaying walls.  Caught in a strange web of time and history, Tennyson comes up with a plan to bring Aigredoux's past to light.  Will it bring her mother home and her family back together? - book jacket

So, I was super excited to read this book.  I don't even remember why I chose it, but I went through all of the trouble of putting it on hold at the library system that I don't usually go to, because that is the only place I could find it.  I checked it out with a list of books that were supposed to be creepy, ghost stories, and the like, back when Halloween was fast approaching.

I remained super excited as I started reading, and got even more excited with every page I turned.  Why?  Well, it is very rare that I come across a writer whose use of imagery and figurative language come anywhere near what Blume has achieved in this book.  It was incredible!  Not only for creating mental images, but for setting the mood and foreshadowing as well.  Here is an example:

"Whose dresses are these?" asked Hattie, putting one on.  It was so long that the bottom gathered in a cloth puddle around her feet.  The old matted lace on the shoulders and wrists swayed like cobwebs.

And how about this:

But soon the road wound out of the lush cane fields and led into a patch of woods that for some reason decided to die.  Instead of turning into dirt, the trees and branches and roots from these dark woods turned themselves white.  They shed all of their bark and the smooth skin underneath bleached itself out in the hot sun.  These tree skeletons jutted up from the earth and steam coiled around the blanched roots.

Or this:

But when they were done holding their breath and the white bone forest was behind them, there was another bone forest in front of them.  These bones looked like enormous trees but they had no branches.  Dying vines covered them, hanging down like long tendrils of black hair.

Blume's language is brilliant.  It sets the mood and tone and all that other good stuff they make you write papers about in your high school English class.  And it was consistent, too, used throughout in just the right amounts.  Wow.

The story was awesome as well.  Not your everyday run-of-the-mill sort of stuff.  Kind of strange, but believable.  Interesting.  Thought-provoking.  Mysterious.  The author paced it so that you kept getting little clues that moved things forward.  I was always on the edge of my seat waiting to find out what was going to be revealed next.  And then . . .

And then the story takes a sharp right turn.  Or actually, it runs right off the road.  Not necessarily into a ditch, with a crashing halt, but more like it careens through a field of brush and gradually slows to a stop.

Not what I was expecting.  Here we had an incredible story that was incredibly written, and the author suddenly switches it so that the story is now about a different character.  A different character that we don't care about, not at the beginning and not at the end after he somehow becomes a dynamic character (for those who are writing a paper for English class).  Which, I must say, was very poorly developed and not believable in the least, even though it would be nice if it could actually happen that way.  And even though the two characters do come together for some sort of resolution at the end, the super-duper wonderful (the chorus is singing) transformation of said character number 2 completely overshadows the resolution involving the story's namesake.

But back to the point.  The story is supposed to be about Tennyson.  And Aigredoux.  And the mysterious past.  And what is going to happen to them both!  It is supposed to be an amazing Gothic (and Southern Gothic, all rolled into one) novel.  But it all pretty much ends in a thoroughly disappointing turn of events (and a decision that is totally uncharacteristic for the main character as she has been presented to us).  What is even more disappointing, is that this turn of events pretty much puts an end to the mystery (so, no resolution), and to the brilliantly descriptive and emotion-inducing writing, and to pretty much everything that was making it a phenomenal story in the first place.  I wanted to pull my hair out.

Maybe the problem is that the story felt like it was going one place (like to a place where the mystery of the house is explored) and ends up going somewhere else (like to the issue of whether the mom is going to come home or not).  It's like Blume had one thing in mind, but went about getting there in the entirely wrong way, leading the reader to a place they were never going to arrive at.

Which is mind boggling.  The editor should have sent the copy back and said, this is not the ending we want - rewrite it!  This would have been a brilliant gothic novel if it had just held its course.  It could have been one of the best books I've ever read.  Shoulda, woulda, coulda, but it didn't.  Way to break a promise.

Perhaps unbelievably, I just purchased a copy of this book (okay, so it was only $3.49 for the hardcover at bookoutlet.com, but still.)  I know, you're probably saying Whaaaat?!!?!?  Why on earth would she do that if it was so horrible?  It wasn't horrible.  Just horribly disappointing.  But the writing, with the use of figurative language and motifs was so incredible, I just had to have it.  Because you don't come by that kind of good stuff very often, and you shouldn't let it slip through your fingers when you do.  Even if it is making promises it never intends to keep.

Rating:  4- Stars
Reading Level: 5.1
Age Appropriate: Middle Grades +
Page Count/Word Count:  228/ 45,307
Genre:  Mystery, Historical Fiction
Keywords:  family relationships, mystery, ante-bellum South, Great Depression