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Mourning Ruby (2003)

by Helen Dunmore

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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276895,051 (3.16)26
Rebecca was abandoned by her mother in a shoebox in the backyard of an Italian restaurant when she was two days old. Her life begins without history, in the dark outdoors. Who is she, where has she come from, and what can she become? Thirty years later, married to Adam, she gives birth to Ruby, and to a new life for herself. But when sudden tragedy changes the course of that life for ever, and all the lives that touch hers, Rebecca is out in the world again, searching . . .… (more)
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English (7)  Dutch (1)  All languages (8)
Showing 1-5 of 7 (next | show all)
I always enjoy Helen Dunmore's writing and this novel is another to add to the list of satisfactory reads.

Ruby is a character to enjoy. Abandoned as a baby, with no ties to her parents, Rebecca makes her own family life with Joe, a historian and good friend; her husband Adam, Joe's friend; and Ruby, her beloved daughter. All is well until..... Well read the book and find out. ( )
  p.d.r.lindsay | Dec 19, 2018 |
Good writing but the structure does it no favours, 27 Jun. 2016

This review is from: Mourning Ruby (Paperback)
Narrated (at first) by Rebecca, this is the story of the loss of her young daughter Ruby. I was lent this by an acquaintance, didn't think it would be my thing at all, but have to say it was much better than expected and Helen Dunmore sure can write.

Nonetheless the structure of the novel was very strange. Rebecca is an extremely wishy-washy creature; eclipsed in interestingness by her rather lovely boss. Mr Damiano is - rather improbably - a one-time trapeze artiste, now owner of a conglomerate of boutique hotels. I did hope she would leave her (also wishy-washy ) husband and find love with the charming hotelier...

The final part of the novel is a story written by Rebecca's friend/ lover Joe. So well-written is it, that the reader completely forgets Rebecca and gets caught up in the happenings of World War I France: the English airmen and the French prostitutes.
Thus by the time one reaches the end, Rebecca is far from the reader's mind as s/he is caught up in the infinitely more riveting one of Florence and Will, and one begrudges Ms Dunmore dragging us back to the main storyline. ( )
1 vote starbox | Jun 27, 2016 |
How does this happen? How can an author who writes such stellar books such as The Seige write a dud like Mourning Ruby.

One hundred pages into it and I quit, counted my loss and moved along. It was good enough to keep hoping that it would get better. Alas, I was tricked.

Checking other reviews, I find the same thoughts as mine, ie too many plots, too many images that float all over kingdom come, too much rambling and way too much convolution.

A tragic loss of a five year old child is a substantial plot, yet Dunmore flies all over the place with snipets of characters and their thoughts. If the thoughts don't add to the story, who cares?

I hate it when I'm left feeling stupid because I didn't comprehend what the heck she was trying to say.

I have no idea what Dunmore was hoping to accomplish. If she was trying to be highly intellectual or highly artistic, she failed.

NOT recommended.
1 vote Whisper1 | Jun 8, 2013 |
As an audio I kept listening but I don't think I would have kept reading it if I had tried it in book form. It was so complete in the description of this horrible accident and the resulting consequences---almost way too much so. And then there were the stories within the story so that we could come full circle.

It is a disturbing listening experience---more than you really want to hear about one person's grief---although eventually we add the husband's grief. It's really not something you want to learn about but as the writer says, we, the reader(s) (listeners) are just walking along with Rebecca, listening to her tell us her story. ( )
  nyiper | Jun 9, 2010 |
More book reviews at Voracia: Goddess of Words

Mourning Ruby is more or less about a mother who is grieving the tragic loss of her five-year-old daughter. But the "more or less" part cannot be overlooked. If it weren't for the title and the ominous cover picture featuring a little girl skipping in the leaves in a red dress, the reader would have no idea what this book is about for quite some time. It begins with a prologue that is a dream sequence, told in the first person, of the narrator--Ruby's mother Rebecca--and Ruby walking along a road. I thought that a novel should never open with a dream; it's a cheap technique, too easily and often used. And unfortunately the book continues that way, although a lot of the techniques are more original. After the prologue, Rebecca describes what happened to her when she herself was a baby, which was that her mother left her in a shoebox outside an Italian restaurant. She was then adopted by parents who seem not to care for her much, and the feelings are mutual. She tells her own story in such a removed and distant way that it is hard to relate to her. Plus, the tone of the writing is confusing and the plot starts jumping all over the place.

Soon we learn that Rebecca lived with a guy who was in love with her, but those feelings weren't mutual. His name is Joe and he writes historical non-fiction. He's in the middle of writing a book about Stalin's second wife, and this story takes up a good chunk of the first part of the book. That story could be rather interesting, but Joe tells it to Rebecca in a series of long drawn-out conversations, in which he makes clear that she is not interested in what he is talking about. So why should the reader be? I never really figured that out, although I did enjoy reading about collectivist Russia.

We also learn that Rebecca has a husband named Adam, but the relationship between them doesn't seem very convincing. He is a doctor who saves newborn babies, ironically. Some things seem like easy plot devices which aren't very realistic-- such as Rebecca working part-time in a bar while her husband is doctoring.

Another central sub-plot in Mourning Ruby is the story of Rebecca and her boss, Mr. Damiano, for whom she goes to work after Ruby's death. To me he was the most interesting character and his story was the most captivating, albeit even more unrealistic than the relationship between Rebecca and Adam. His family performed in circuses in Madrid, and his little sister suffered a tragedy almost as devastating as Ruby's death. Mr. Damiano likes to re-create "dream worlds"--obviously a theme underlying the novel--and bring pleasure to people as his business. He owns a chain of hotels, all named after minor to rather obsure poets: Sidney, Lampedusa, Villon, Langland, Sonescu, Cavafy, Sexton, and Bishop. Poetry and written language play a central part in this novel. In fact, an obvious theme is a writer writing about writing, which I found at times to be both interesting and annoying.

For instance, each chapter--and many of them are very short--starts out with a rather strange title and a snippet of a poem, excerpt from a book, or folk song. I found these snippets to be distracting because I wanted to know where they came from and how they related to the book and what the rest of the snippet was all about. Like much about the book, this information is never revealed to the reader, except at the very end, when Dunmore includes a list of "sources," which include her own poetry. Also in line with the literary theme, Joe tells Rebecca near the beginning of the book that the Russian poet Mandelstam once wrote about baby airplanes as a metapher for writing poetry: one airplane in full flight gives birth to another airplane, which then flies off and gives birth to another airplane. Dunmore weaves this theme into the novel, as a way to show how one story gives life to another, and all stories are connected. I suppose that Rebecca is trying to find her own life story, but the rather interesting plot line about her birth and her upbringing as an adopted child is abandoned rather early on. It's hard to care about a book when each story drops off after it gives birth to the next one. Ruby's death is the only main theme that continues throughout the book, but it's hard to connect to because so many other stories are swarming around it.

Most frustrating of all, for me, wasn't the fact that so many stories were told, but rather it was the way they were told. Much of the prose during Rebecca's narration is beautiful (the jacket cover states that Dunmore is a poet and short story writer, so I might like to check her out in these contexts, in which the language and style might work better for me than it did in a novel). The flowery language, however, seemed to detract from the plot for me and made it hard for me to related to Rebecca as a real character. And some of the stories that had the potential to be the most exciting were told in the dullest manners possible. Mr. Damiano's fascinating life story is told--much like the history of Stalin that Joe is writing--in long strings of conversation, which to me took a lot away from the potential captivating action. I was unsure why Dunmore chose to do this, even though I "got" that she had this over-riding theme of writing about writing, and writing about stories within stories.

Mid-way through Mourning Ruby, the point of view changes, and we are seeing Joe, told from the omniscient perspective, without Rebecca there, and also Adam in the same way. To me this was disappointing and destroyed any integrity the novel was supposed to have. It was another easy way out. The last part of the book is part of a novel that Joe sends to Rebecca, ostensibly to help her figure out her own story. I found part of this plot interesting, as it was about a prostitute named Florence who lived in France during the First World War. The Madame of the house was the only strong female character in the book (I thought it was annoying how Rebecca learned everything about herself through the three main male characters), although Florence, by the end portion of Joe's unfinished work of fiction, was starting to develop into a strong character as well. Joe tells Rebecca that he hasn't finished the book and so he encloses character and plot notes, which we the poor readers are forced to suffer through, right when we were into the story of Florence, and quite awhile after we had totally lost track of the story of Rebecca and Ruby.

Overall, Mourning Ruby was one of the most discombobulated novels I have ever read. At first it left me feeling disoriented, and then, once I got my bearings, it usually left me feeling disappointed. At times the language was captivating, and at other times the plot was too. These times were nearly canceled out, however, by the parts that seemed to be told in a hurry of rushed dialogue. The concept is certainly ambitious and I like some of the ideas behind the novel, but I think they were executed rather poorly, with style valued much more than substance. I did enjoy the writing theme, but it was much too much: definitely overkill. I enjoyed reading about the different places and time periods. Most of the parts featuring Rebecca--all of which are contemporary--are set in Cornwall, and some in London (Dunmore is a British writer). I also enjoyed reading about historical France and historical and modern-day Russia (where Joe briefly resides and where Rebecca and Adam go to visit him in a rather twisted love-triangle). So I can't say I regret reading this unique book, but it certainly wasn't one of my favorites.

For more book reviews and other posts of interest to readers and writers, please visit my blog More book reviews at Voracia: Goddess of Words ( )
2 vote voracia | Nov 3, 2009 |
Showing 1-5 of 7 (next | show all)
Dunmore captures grief's insidiousness, its slow colonizing of the senses. . . It's too bad the devices Dunmore uses to accomplish this are contrived.
 

» Add other authors

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Dunmore, Helenprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Aertsen, Ellasecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Leishman, VirginiaNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
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We're on the coast road from Zennor to St Just.
Quotations
She understood that she had no rights in the future of a baby she was about to give away. She wanted me to start with a clean sheet.

I mistrust sensitive people. In my experience what they are chiefly sensitive to is themselves.
In my view friendship can be rarer and tenderer than love.
When people say you remind them of someone it means that you remind them of themselves, of their own life, of their own concerns. You are a mirror, that's all.
The circus had taught me the most important trick it possesses: to discover what people want, before they know it themselves, and before anyone else knows it. To discover it first, and act on it. It sounds very simple, doesn't it? You wonder why everyone doesn't find it out.
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Rebecca was abandoned by her mother in a shoebox in the backyard of an Italian restaurant when she was two days old. Her life begins without history, in the dark outdoors. Who is she, where has she come from, and what can she become? Thirty years later, married to Adam, she gives birth to Ruby, and to a new life for herself. But when sudden tragedy changes the course of that life for ever, and all the lives that touch hers, Rebecca is out in the world again, searching . . .

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