The Lion in the Room Next Door - Hardcover

Simonds, Merilyn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399145915 ISBN 13: 9780399145919

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 2000

Synopsis

A debut collection of eleven intertwined short stories follows one woman's journey from child to adult as she explores the darker side of her soul. 15,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Merilyn Simonds was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and spent her childhood in Brazil. Her previous book, The Convict Lover, was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for nonfiction and the Arthur Ellis Award. She lives in Kingston, Ontario, and is working on her first novel.

Reviews

Keenly observed, the stories that make up Simonds's second book (after the nonfiction The Convict Lover) chart the course of one woman's life, from her earliest apprehension of sex to her midlife intimations of mortality. Divided into three sections ("Saudades--Yearnings," "Lipes--Sorrows," and "Milagros--Miracles"), the 11 narratives take the unnamed Canadian narrator through several familiar rites of passage, including escape into an early marriage and a later decision to leave her husband. But in its particulars, the existence described is unfamiliar, even exotic. The narrator spends her '50s childhood in Brazil, lives her first years as a wife and mother traveling by van around Europe, raises her children on a subsistence farm in northern Canada and, breaking out of her marriage, travels to Mexico and Hawaii. Simonds writes about this life with a poet's attention to language and metaphor. In the exquisitely wrought title story, for instance, a leashed lion takes nocturnal walks through the halls of a Brazilian hotel, leaving "a faint scent of feline. A memory of topaz eyes." While the image captures a child's presentiment of sex, the story subtly suggests both the privilege and the loneliness of expatriate life. Indeed, Simonds masterfully juxtaposes her narrator's discordant feelings in all the richly layered narratives. At times, the resemblance to memoir grows irksome, as when information is withheld that might be too personal or when events are summarized that might be dramatized. More often, Simonds is brilliant in her silences, showing just enough and nothing more. Writing lapidary sentences, she has crafted stories so solid they seem sculpted, yet so delicate they remain full of mystery. (Feb.) FYI: The Convict Lover received the Arthur Ellis Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An episodic history of 40 years in an unnamed woman's life, from childhood through early middle age, told in 11 subtly related stories: a debut collection by the Canadian author (new to American readers) of the highly praised recent nonfiction The Convict Lover. Simonds establishes her protagonist's dreaminess in the first (title) story, which describes a seven-year-old girl's explorations of the Brazilian hotel where her family lives while her father manages a nearby factoryspecifically, her sighting of a neighboring guest who keeps a lion in his room and calmly walks the beast through the hallway. It's a nifty image: both an expression of the child's untrammeled imagination and a fantasy of protection and empowerment. The girls later experiences often take similarly visionary form: Instruction from a beloved teacher stimulates a meditation on the likely existence of angels; trips to Mexico and Hawaii summon up an understanding of the blessings and curses of continuity, conferred by viewing the ruins of an ancient Mayan city and seeingin the specters of carnivorous tropical birdsdisturbing corollaries to ``the image that came to mind when I thought of myself: indistinct and flayed, nothing left but glistening bone and sinew. These stories' narrator is an incarnation of restlessness who phlegmatically distances herself from her family and home (in rural Ontario), sleepwalks through an itinerant marriage to a German sculptor, the father of her two sons, then separates from him and takes a lover while continuing to seek a ``home'' in the aforementioned and other foreign lands, eventually returning to Ontario, where Simonds concludes the book with a marvelous summary story, ``The Day of the Dead.'' This is a revelation of the womans encounters with death, climaxing with that of her mother and ending with a lyrical intimation of her own passing. Beautifully wrought, emotionally complex, satisfying fiction. Simonds may be the next Alice Munro. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This collection of interconnected short stories, published in Canada in 1999, garnered well-deserved outstanding reviews. The eleven stories are organized under the significant Yearnings, Sorrows, and Miracles in a woman's life. Although the stories are fictional, the easy-flowing first-person narration gives them the feel of a memoir. The unnamed central character, like the author, is Canadian-born and spent part of her childhood in Brazil. Both influences are reflected in Simonds' haunting prose, which is both lush and concise. The stories are seductive, melancholy and dark, sensual and sexual. Danger, assault, or loss is revealed, sometimes unexpectedly, or lurking just around the corner, just under the surface. Each chapterlike story is complete by itself; together, they tell of a woman's experiences, from childhood into her 40s--experiences of love and longing, the pain of separation and letting go, the struggle to heal after suffering. Simonds, who has won several Canadian writing awards, is the author of 10 books, including The Convict Lover, the stage adaptation of which premiered in Toronto in 1998. Grace Fill

Edition details

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0399145915
• ISBN 13: 9780399145919
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272