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This Will Never Stop

The title of Joan Spilman’s novel, This Will Never Stop (Xlibris), is spoken by Carmen Amber, the character around whom most of the book revolves. Her mother, Lizzie, has hold of her wrist. “This has to stop,” she tells her daughter: the drinking, the grieving, the locked doors and child neglect. It has to stop.

But it doesn’t, and Carmen, a young widow with three kids and a ferocious resolve to self-destruct, slams through the house in her nightgown, scaring her children and giving the neighbors something to talk about. Grandma Lizzie runs the house like a fierce Mary Poppins, sweeping in to cook meals and launder clothes and change the bedding. Lorraine, the oldest of the children and the only girl, maneuvers her way through the days dodging the slings and arrows of domestic combat between her mother and grandmother. Her brothers, younger and mercifully oblivious, set up a tent in the backyard.

Carmen’s alcoholism is the terrible meat of the story, but This Will Never Stop tracks the lives of four generations of women, presenting them last one first and ending with Grandma Lizzie’s mother’s story, which explains a lot. Living in a time where women expect equal rights, respect, and a full-time job, it may be hard for some readers to understand how these women got so damaged and why they cannot right themselves. As far as getting an education and improving your lot?  Lizzie told her daughter this: “Maybe it’s time for you to quit trying to get above your raising. … Your lessons are over. Now raise your kids.”

A STUDY OF POVERTY, DRIVEN BY FURY AND HOPELESSNESS

The stories of these women’s lives are gripping, but the overarching message is more grand. This is a sociological study of poverty, lack of education and religious intolerance (as Lorraine says, “Religion isn’t like cleaning a chicken. You can’t take the messy parts out.”). It’s an unsettling example of the battle between nature and nurture, and a reminder of just how far we’ve come building healthier relationships between men and women.

The years yawning between the Madame Alexander doll and gender-neutral Barbie tell us plenty about the role women have had to play for generations; but readers will probably think about that only after they’ve finished the book, because fury and hopelessness drive the story.

Except for the unlucky Samy (with one M) and the kind Dr. Talbot, men do not look good in this novel. They are slobbering drunks, pedophiles and cruel husbands. Even big brother Al, who makes his sister’s bullies eat cow pies, eventually goes off to seek his own fortune, leaving Lizzie behind.

Dependent on men, women must accept unacceptable situations, unwanted pregnancies and subjugation.  Modern readers will be rooting for Lizzie and her doomed mother, the beautiful and talented Carmen Amber, and finally Lorraine – “the rock against which we all leaned,” says Lizzie at the end of the book, “but rocks can only take so much pressure.”

Seems bleak, but oddly, like Carmen Amber, readers may have quit listening to Grandma Lizzie and are still hoping for the best.

This Will Never Stop is available for purchase. Learn more about Joan Spilman on her BookTrib author profile page.

 

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This Will Never Stop by
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Xlibris Us
ISBN: 9781796051350
Sherri Daley

Sherri Daley has been writing freelance for national and regional publications for many years, including MORE magazine, Car and Driver, and the New York Times. She is the author of a book about commodities traders and a ghostwriter for business motivational texts. As a freelancer, she has established herself as someone who will write about anything – from cancer treatments to the lives of Broadway stagehands to that new car smell, blueberry jam, and Joshua Bell’s violin. Her curiosity drives her to read about anything, too, and she’s eager to share what she likes with others. She says life’s too short to read a bad book. When she’s not reading, she’s tending her gardens in Connecticut where she lives with her cat and a cage of zebra finches, although she’d rather be living in Iceland. Visit her blog at sherridaley.com for more!

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