Mourning Ruby
by Helen Dunmore
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Book Summary Information
Author: Helen DunmoreEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-02-01
ISBN: 0425200191
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Book Reviews of Mourning Ruby
Book Review: (RAW Rating: 4.5) - To Lose a Child is to Lose Yourself
Summary: 5 Stars
Losing a child is like losing yourself-and for a while that is exactly what happens to Rebecca. She started out life as a foundling, left in a shoebox in the alley behind Vittorio's Italian restaurant. Due to the intervention of the Blessed Virgin, according to her rescuer, she is discovered before becoming food for the rats and subsequently adopted. Unfortunately, she never establishes familial ties with her adopted family and, as an adult, struggles to make a place for herself in the world that feels like home.
Rebecca's life is changed for the better when she meets and moves in with Joe. Not her lover, but definitely loved, he changes her life for the good. He even introduces her to her future husband, Adam. Rebecca lives a blissful existence with Joe and Adam and eventually gives birth to beautiful, red-haired, Ruby. For the first time in her life, Rebecca is connected to someone by blood, and she finally begins to feel that she is not alone in the world.
Fate, however, has other plans for Rebecca. Ruby dies. Rebecca and Adam are both lost in grief and end up losing each other. They slog through their days trying to stifle their grief, Adam as a neonatologist, seeking ways he could have saved Ruby in every premature baby he treats, and Rebecca as the steadfast assistant of a wealthy hotelier, Mr. Damiano. Her beneficent boss sees Rebecca's grief and finds a way to help her re-invent her life's story.
Joe, devastated for his friends and trying to deal with the angst of growing up without his own father, makes a tremendous sacrifice for Rebecca by turning away from his all-consuming historical research and crafting a novel set in World War I of two lovers who might have been Rebecca's mother and his father, binding them as siblings as surely as if they had been born that way.
Fiercely emotional, hauntingly sad, and yet joyful in the end, MOURNING RUBY is a story of loss and redemption, grief and grace. Helen Dunmore's skill as a poet has stood her well in creating lyrical, delicate, and passionate prose. It's like watching a ballerina wearing a red or purple tutu-elegant, yet lush. This book is as intelligent as it is bittersweet and destined to become a classic.
Reviewed by Kim Anderson Ray
of The RAWSISTAZ? Reviewers
Family Saga Books
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