Bailey's Beads

by Terry Wolverton

Do we truly know the ones we love or do we invent them, turning them into fictions, projections of our own desires? When a chance car accident sends writer Bryn Redding into a deep coma, a whole luminous life is eclipsed, plunged into a state of darkness. The only glimmers that remain appear through perceptions of those who love her, but contradictions between these views render them suspect.
These images of Bryn conflict acutely for Djuna, Bryn's lover of four years, and Vera, Bryn's mother. Gathered at her hospital bedside, each stakes a claim to Bryn's identity, her past and future. Who is Bryn Redding? Is she the difficult, angry girl her mother remembers, or the vibrant iconoclast her lover adores?
As friends from the present and past - the community Bryn has built to supplant her family of origin - gather at her side, a many-faceted picture emerges of a woman whose inner life is a mystery. When one of these friends presents Vera with copies of Bryn's published works, Vera comes to understand that her memories of the past contrast irreconcilably with her daughter's. Bryn's tough, spare writing provides yet another picture of Bryn Redding, the manufactured layers of personae and the history that lurks beneath, all the while cautioning the reader that fiction is never a reliable mirror of reality.
As Bryn hovers between life and death, the antagonism between Vera and Djuna ebbs, each coming to recognize that the Bryn of their imaginations will never be restored to them, and that recovery, if achieved at all, will bring further mysteries.

185 pages, Hardcover

First published August 9, 1996

Reviews

[Faith Reidenbach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wolverton teaches creative writing and advocates for LGBTQ publishing, so it's hard not to give her a higher rating. This novel is interesting but......dutiful. The best part is an "experimental" novel within the novel, written by the character who's in the coma and read by her mother, who was never supposed to see it. A whole book like the experimental novel would have been tiring (its main characters don't have names), but it did more to explicate the coma character than all the words and deeds of her lover, mother, best friend, and acupuncturist.

[Cheryl Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This girlfriend-in-a-coma story is an interesting examination of how we create our identities, and especially those of our loved ones, through story. The novel plays with form in a way that feels ahead of its time (the original pub date was the early '90s, I believe), and the questions it asks are still relevant. It's also a good read for anyone who's ever dealt with a difficult in-law. :-)

[Angela Brinskele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall the writing was exceptional and the plot unique. I challenge anyone to say they have read a story just like this. Original and well done!