Stay

Stay is the powerful story of a young girl stunned into silence after the death of her twin brother. Set in small-town Massachusetts and on Martha's Vineyard, Stay is a terrifically accomplished first novel, and a redemptive tale of love, loss and perserverance.

"Few characters are as eloquent as the mute Emily. Stay will stay with you long after you've reluctantly turned the final, moving page. " -Mameve Medwed

Mary Sullivan lives in Cambridge, where she is on the staff at PEN/New England. Stay is her first novel.

Chapter One

"Time for confession," my sister whispers in my ear. "You better talk to us or you'll end up like you know who."

I follow Hope through the kitchen, past Mum's oatmeal bread rising in the gold mixing bowl. Hope points up the street, but I can't see past the overgrown pine and juniper trees, the dogwood and the rhododendron bushes blooming around the end of our driveway, closing in around us. It feels like all of Cawood is right here in our yard, full of trees and cat willows, chickens and swamp.

"Come on, Emily, now or never," Hope says from the top of the stairs. "Are you coming?"

"Yeah, are you coming?" Elizabeth Ruth asks. Hope's my oldest sister, then Sarah, Elizabeth Ruth, and me.

I reach around and pat along my shoulders until I think I find a bony lump right at the back of my neck which seems to grow bigger right under my fingers. Elizabeth Ruth sees me and says, mimicking Mum, "That's what happens when all that badness piles up inside-tchhh, tchhh, tchhh." I don't want to be like old hunchbacked Mr. Kosik with his back so swollen up and hunched over with sins that his head is like a turtle's tucked into his chest. I'll go with my sisters, but I won't tell them anything. I follow Elizabeth Ruth into Hope's room next to the bathroom, where we'll confess our sins.

"We'll see who's going to heaven," Hope says, spreading the bathroom mat in front of the tub and draping a towel over the curtain rod of the bathroom window to block out the morning light. Then she stands in the doorway and nods, meaning she's ready for Sarah to come and kneel inside the tub to make her confession.

Hope shuts the door on me an

Sullivan's debut novel is a memoirlike, first-person narrative of a family quickly disintegrating following the death of a child. The story of the relentlessly dysfunctional Stone family can be compared to Mary Karr's memoir The Liars' Club. However, unlike the spunky Karr, 11-year-old narrator Emily Stone suffers in silence. It is the summer of 1974, one year since her twin brother, Ham, drowned on Martha's Vineyard; during that time Emily has not spoken. At the family's home in small-town Cawood, Mass., her father, Donald, a modestly successful inventor, copes with the tragedy by drinking, eating candy bars and terrorizing his remaining seven children. Mum tends to new baby Owen, quietly suffers her husband's physical abuse, and loses a few fingers when she neglects an infection. Older sibling Elizabeth Ruth, 13, is raped by a neighbor, tells no one and shaves every hair from her body. Emily sees it all, but clutched deep inside her is the memory of holding her brother's hand on the bridge, hearing her father urging them to jump and feeling Ham's hand being yanked from hers. Emily tries to piece together what she remembers from the accident and learn how to continue living as a half person, without her twin. The story culminates in a return trip to Martha's Vineyard, where guilt is exposed and changes promised. Harrowing as her tale is, Sullivan's remarkable ability to capture the rhythms of life in a large family, and her understanding of the desperate love and loyalty elicited by shared hardship, light up the darkness. This is just one in a sea of similar narratives, and as such may be overlooked, but it is a quietly moving first novel. (Nov.) FYI: Sullivan is the coordinator for PEN New England.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Eleven-year-old Emily Stone hasn't spoken a word since she witnessed the drowning of her twin brother, Ham, a year ago. She and her six siblings are forbidden by their strict father to speak of Ham or his death. Eventually, the mother talks only to silent Emily of Ham's death and funeral. Emily's older sister Elizabeth Ruth begins a risky flirtation with a much older neighbor; and her brother Luke has started talking to himself. When their father decides to take the family back to Martha's Vineyard, the scene of Ham's accident, their facade begins to crumble, and the children rebel against his enforced order. Emily's silence, which has allowed her to fade into the background and be a witness to the ways the members of her family have handled their grief, must finally be broken to allow her to come to terms with Ham's death. Sullivan's first novel is a powerful portrait of a family's overwhelming grief, and the toll that suppressing it takes on the members. Kristine Huntley
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