Book Review: The Taste of Air

One quote I loved and read several times serves as the theme of The Taste of Air, I believe. “The chain of connections and separations is how our lives pass.” So beautiful and so true not just in the context of this novel.

Cleare used one of my favorite devices in her tale: Alternating chapters for different points of view AND time periods. Having lived through the Viet Nam years described in her book, I could relate to the angst and the horrors she shared. I had friends and relatives there. We got a feel for the era in the mother’s chapters that brought back vivid memories and images. This book isn’t billed as historical fiction, but HF readers will find much to like.

Gail Cleare’s USA Today Bestseller is a novel of three women, a mom and her two daughters who discover that they may not be as familiar with one another as they had thought. It is a novel that will move your spirit through recognition of your own life and your relationships with those close to you. How well do we really know anyone, even those we think we know best?

We learn that each woman’s secrets, yearnings, struggles, and choices have an effect on their own lives and the lives of those closest to them. When Nell learns that her gravely ill mother led a secret life for decades, she is hurt, baffled, and determined to unravel the mysteries created by her mother’s choices. She enlists the aid of her sister, Bridget, and her mother’s closest secret friends, breaking down their barriers meant to protect their mother.

Through their discoveries about their mother’s secrets and the reasons for them, Nell and Bridget come to realizations about their own lives that, in the end, profoundly affect both of them. Each woman struggles with what self-actualization, modeled by their mother’s actions, must mean in their own lives.

The theme of air plays out in a variety of ways, from the mother’s ventilator to the freshness of country air to the emotional air that separation from the familiar provides. Cleare uses air in so many literal and metaphorical ways that one finds oneself looking for the next description.

Cleare’s descriptive language is poetic, evoking literary fiction without the pretentiousness of some books in that genre. She creates scenes with words that put you in the middle with the action, sights, smells, and tastes happening all around. It is a beautifully written book.

I loved The Taste of Air, and I predict you will, too. It touches us on so many levels.

You can read your own copy of this beautiful novel. The Taste of Air, published by Red Adept Publishing, is available on Amazon.

Disclosure:

This review is modified from one I posted on another of my blogs, Romance Righter, by Angelica French, my romance pen name.