20. A Map of the World

20. A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton (6/29/2011 - 7/7/2011)

This was frankly a very unusual book.  The story arc described by the back (which was what I used to buy the book) and the story that the book contains are very different.  The back describes roughly the first 50 or so pages of probably 300 or so, and what they describe has only the most basic and minimal relationship with the rest of the plot.

Alice and Theresa are neighbors and close friends in a small farming community, and they alternate watching each other's kids.  One morning, Alice is watching Theresa's children when one of them gets away from her; this child wanders out of the house without anyone realizing and ends up drowning in a pond on Alice's property.  Alice and Theresa's relationship takes an awful turn, of course, as Theresa struggles with her child's death.  But this accident has a major effect on Alice as well, who spirals into a horrific depression to the point where she will barely climb out of bed.

From this opening, I was expected the rest of the story to deal with the changes in the lives of both of these women; what actually happens, though, is quite bizarre.  Alice is arrested about a month after the little girl's death under accusations of child molestation from a boy who attends the school where Alice works as a nurse.  Since this is such a shock to the community, she is kept in jail under $100K bond until her trial, so her husband struggles to get her released.  Up until this point, the story is told from Alice's first-person perspective, which I did not find appealing as she spends a remarkable amount of time feeling sorry for herself.  But after she fails to be released pending her trial, the narration switches to her husband Howard's perspective, and he is a much better narrator.  The story is still a little confusing because the first part seems so irrelevant; Theresa actually ends up caring for Alice's children during the majority of the time she's imprisoned, so why Hamilton would kill off one of the children is just beyond me.

I suppose there is some enormous lesson about forgiveness here, but when a mother forgives her child's murderer, whether that death was accidental or otherwise, within about two months, that doesn't seem like forgiveness really to me -- that seems like insanity.  I won't give away the ending except to say that while Theresa continues to keep in touch, ultimately the two families drift apart.  I think perhaps that this story is more aimed at people around my mother's age and not mine; it seems like the type of thing she would enjoy far more than I would, especially considering that she knows what it's like to have children and so could imagine the horror of losing one, whereas I cannot possibly fathom that.