Carry The One by
Carol Anshaw
Genre: Dramatic/Suspense
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: March 2012
Reviewed
by Chrystal Dorsey
In Carry The One Carol Anshaw presents her reading
audience with a very ambitious fourth
novel…one which spans from a 1983 Wisconsin wedding through the 2008
Election as it chronicles a Chicago
family thrown off balance by a fatal accident.
This story explores how the lives of three siblings are affected
after a fatal freak accident, that ends the life of 10 year old Casey Redman late one night on a dark dirt
road with Nick's drugged out girlfriend Olivia behind the wheel.
The reason I accepted this selection from the Publisher for a
read/review was because the last sentence of the first chapter really caught my
attention – ‘…a jumble of knees and elbows, and then her face, frozen in
surprise, eyes wide open-huge on the other side of the windshield.' - It
held the promise of a thrilling and interesting read.
What I found within the two hundred and sixty nine page novel was;
the (key) characters are rather tragic sheepish souls wondering aimlessly
through their own lives, whose relationships are forged in grief and guilt. The
storytelling is simple but is considered to be well crafted. The readers will
follow the characters as they go through friendships and love affairs; growing
up and finding success; marriage and divorce; parenthood, and the tragedies and
joys of ordinary days.
There's Alice a basically sound lesbian that has a deep seated obsession
for Maude, is also a gifted artist competing with her egocentric father; loving
judgmental Carmen a political activist and then there's their brother, Nick, a once brilliant
astronomer - he may be one of the most interesting characters in this tale, but
that may largely be due to his constant drug induced state of mind ,he
later swears off drugs in order to win
back Olivia after she’s released from prison, however his addiction to drugs and alcohol have an
even firmer grip on him than super glue on an eyelash. It is through Nick’s
drug dependence that readers are able to see how degraded a talented person can
become, and how eventually a family can become as equally exasperated with the
user because of it.
As for the title it comes from Alice, who says: “Because of the
accident, we’re not just separate numbers. When you add us up, you always have
to carry the one.”
The author's poetic prose is rather outstanding as she casually
writes about these characters without the benefit of any real action - which
will keep some readers turning the pages in search of, as they are fall witness
to Anshaw's exceptional gift as a wordsmith and the comfort she maintains while
utilizing her extensive vocabulary with words such as coalesce (amorphous,
fatuous, confluence) with ease and relevance. Nevertheless, I found the story
to be rather dry - then again, that is perhaps the writer's intended goal,
considering she is telling a story of the ordinary days of a rather ordinary
family following an extra ordinary event - the most exciting and entertaining
aspect of this read was held hostage within the first few chapters.
My final thoughts, I wanted and needed more zest, at least
something that would propel me to want to vigorously flip through the pages, fall
in love with the characters and be engaged by the story, alas Carry
The One did not carry me through those various stages of interest as I’d
hoped. And the book's abrupt ending did not conjure up a sense of satisfaction or
the desired anticipation of more.
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