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Gauguin's Moon (18)
Daniella believes her lost mother is a World War II spy, but is terrorized by a dream of a war-torn jungle, raining fire. At forty, with her life and career stalled, Daniella is visited by four dead ancestors, who try to help her put her life back together. When this fails, propelled by curiosity about her recurring dream, she travels to the nuclear testing grounds at the Bikini Islands, to find out her mother's real role in the war and its aftermath.
200 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2019
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December 31, 2019
Gauguin’s Moon by Laura Marello
By the time Daniella was 30 the four people who had the most impact on her formative years were dead, her mother, who died when she was only twelve, Aunt Charlotte, her first lover Elaine and her older would-be lover Andrew. Now in 1995 at forty, at the point where she has now outlived her mother, these people miraculously reappear clearly on a mission of some sort. Once over her surprise Daniella looks forward to getting some of the gaps in her family narrative filled out, for example the burning question for her about what her mother did for the FBI during and after WWII. In contrast, these very down to earth phantasms are not focused on the past but intent on starting her off on an unexpected and traumatic journey in search of herself.
Daniella is a sculptor and photographer who, with a substantial body of work to her name, has come to a point of impasse in her life. Her career has stalled. Due to an accident she has undergone the trauma of major back surgery and its aftermath. Living on Cape Cod she supports herself as a college teacher, but her life is dominated by fear which has caused her to shrink her existence down to a rigid solitude. Her current work- in both mediums, consists of depicting women half in and out of sand, water, or lying in a semi-reclined pose. A theme of uncertainty predominates. After her mother died when she was twelve, she was plagued by nightmares in which her mother came back periodically but only for a while. These dreams had diminished years ago but one nightmare persists in which she is in an apocalyptic setting trying to drive her mother to safety through a “landscape of rain and fire.”
Daniella returns home from her studio to find her mother sitting on the couch, insisting that she is not a hallucination and seeming pretty much as she remembered her. Waking next morning Daniella finds that her mother has now been joined by Aunt Charlotte, Elaine, and Andrew. None of these people had ever before been in her presence together and they all seem about the same age 50-ish, even though her mother had died thirty years before at 40.
Marello treats this situation with an affectionate humour. Daniella’s phantasmic guests all act with studied normality and deflect most questions about their current existence, her mother almost primly insisting that while they might materialize through a door it would be unthinkable to do so through a wall, while others say they eat drink and behave in a way not to make it awkward for the people with whom they interact. No revelations about her mother’s clandestine life are made. State secrets remain secrets even though the war was over decades before. “For some reason I was sure that logic would appeal to dead people, that dead people were smarter, purer, more enlightened and evolved than living people.” No, says her mother “Dying doesn’t enlighten you necessarily. It’s just another change. “
Old attitudes persist too. When her mother insists that Daniella go off to her studio as she normally would, Aunt Charlotte wants to spoil her and pleads for to be given a day off from routine. Nevertheless, Daniella does go to her studio to work with her model. One by one her visitors supplant the model without Daniella ever really seeing the moment of substitution and each challenges her to find a way to move forward in life and re-engage with the world. Aunt Charlotte points out that this is an anniversary of sorts, Daniella has now outlived her mother and it is time for her to “start living”. Elaine accuses her of using grief to avoid taking responsibility for her life. “You think if you make yourself unhappy enough, you’ll be paying proper respect for the dead… well that’s not respect.” Her mother says she’s afraid because she has always had “a vivid imagination” and that she is avoiding living and not justified in feeling she can’t be happy if her mother is dead. Andrew makes it quite plain; she must seek out and confront the landscape of her nightmares, the “landscape of fire and rain” to find the answer to who she is as an individual.
Visiting places in which she has lived with these magical visitors does not lead to the landscape of her nightmares which she begins to realize more closely resembles the destruction of Hiroshima. Tying this in with her aunt’s penchant for collecting Polynesian art leads her to embark on a voyage of exploration to that other area of nuclear devastation, the atolls in the Marshall Islands used by the US to test nuclear weapons in the 50s. Once there, despite “Project Gauguin”, the FBI’s monitoring of and attempts to limit what she sees, she sees at first hand the physical and human aftermath of nuclear testing that persists even 40 years later.
The novel comes to a climax in the next phase of her journey to the distant islands of Polynesia. It is in this section that Marello thoughtfully and empathetically takes you along with Daniella as she risks her life to find her soul as she participates in what were very real events in 1995 and 1996 that brought to life the landscape of her nightmares. No spoilers here, you need to experience Marello’s compelling narrative of this journey and its revelations for yourself.
The idea of the visitors from the grave may seem to be a weak plot device, but not here. To those who have lost significant family members and friends during their formative years the desire to retrieve that part of growing up together that was denied them is very real. When trees grow up close together, they influence each other’s shape so that when one falls it takes a while for the remaining tree to fill out the resulting gap and find its own mature shape, so too with human beings.
The author and I connected through an organization but have never met yet though I have been fortunate to receive copies of her novels to review. With this one I believe she achieved a new level of connection to the human condition and it moved me deeply. Read this novel and go along on Daniella’s journey. You’ll be glad you did.
By the time Daniella was 30 the four people who had the most impact on her formative years were dead, her mother, who died when she was only twelve, Aunt Charlotte, her first lover Elaine and her older would-be lover Andrew. Now in 1995 at forty, at the point where she has now outlived her mother, these people miraculously reappear clearly on a mission of some sort. Once over her surprise Daniella looks forward to getting some of the gaps in her family narrative filled out, for example the burning question for her about what her mother did for the FBI during and after WWII. In contrast, these very down to earth phantasms are not focused on the past but intent on starting her off on an unexpected and traumatic journey in search of herself.
Daniella is a sculptor and photographer who, with a substantial body of work to her name, has come to a point of impasse in her life. Her career has stalled. Due to an accident she has undergone the trauma of major back surgery and its aftermath. Living on Cape Cod she supports herself as a college teacher, but her life is dominated by fear which has caused her to shrink her existence down to a rigid solitude. Her current work- in both mediums, consists of depicting women half in and out of sand, water, or lying in a semi-reclined pose. A theme of uncertainty predominates. After her mother died when she was twelve, she was plagued by nightmares in which her mother came back periodically but only for a while. These dreams had diminished years ago but one nightmare persists in which she is in an apocalyptic setting trying to drive her mother to safety through a “landscape of rain and fire.”
Daniella returns home from her studio to find her mother sitting on the couch, insisting that she is not a hallucination and seeming pretty much as she remembered her. Waking next morning Daniella finds that her mother has now been joined by Aunt Charlotte, Elaine, and Andrew. None of these people had ever before been in her presence together and they all seem about the same age 50-ish, even though her mother had died thirty years before at 40.
Marello treats this situation with an affectionate humour. Daniella’s phantasmic guests all act with studied normality and deflect most questions about their current existence, her mother almost primly insisting that while they might materialize through a door it would be unthinkable to do so through a wall, while others say they eat drink and behave in a way not to make it awkward for the people with whom they interact. No revelations about her mother’s clandestine life are made. State secrets remain secrets even though the war was over decades before. “For some reason I was sure that logic would appeal to dead people, that dead people were smarter, purer, more enlightened and evolved than living people.” No, says her mother “Dying doesn’t enlighten you necessarily. It’s just another change. “
Old attitudes persist too. When her mother insists that Daniella go off to her studio as she normally would, Aunt Charlotte wants to spoil her and pleads for to be given a day off from routine. Nevertheless, Daniella does go to her studio to work with her model. One by one her visitors supplant the model without Daniella ever really seeing the moment of substitution and each challenges her to find a way to move forward in life and re-engage with the world. Aunt Charlotte points out that this is an anniversary of sorts, Daniella has now outlived her mother and it is time for her to “start living”. Elaine accuses her of using grief to avoid taking responsibility for her life. “You think if you make yourself unhappy enough, you’ll be paying proper respect for the dead… well that’s not respect.” Her mother says she’s afraid because she has always had “a vivid imagination” and that she is avoiding living and not justified in feeling she can’t be happy if her mother is dead. Andrew makes it quite plain; she must seek out and confront the landscape of her nightmares, the “landscape of fire and rain” to find the answer to who she is as an individual.
Visiting places in which she has lived with these magical visitors does not lead to the landscape of her nightmares which she begins to realize more closely resembles the destruction of Hiroshima. Tying this in with her aunt’s penchant for collecting Polynesian art leads her to embark on a voyage of exploration to that other area of nuclear devastation, the atolls in the Marshall Islands used by the US to test nuclear weapons in the 50s. Once there, despite “Project Gauguin”, the FBI’s monitoring of and attempts to limit what she sees, she sees at first hand the physical and human aftermath of nuclear testing that persists even 40 years later.
The novel comes to a climax in the next phase of her journey to the distant islands of Polynesia. It is in this section that Marello thoughtfully and empathetically takes you along with Daniella as she risks her life to find her soul as she participates in what were very real events in 1995 and 1996 that brought to life the landscape of her nightmares. No spoilers here, you need to experience Marello’s compelling narrative of this journey and its revelations for yourself.
The idea of the visitors from the grave may seem to be a weak plot device, but not here. To those who have lost significant family members and friends during their formative years the desire to retrieve that part of growing up together that was denied them is very real. When trees grow up close together, they influence each other’s shape so that when one falls it takes a while for the remaining tree to fill out the resulting gap and find its own mature shape, so too with human beings.
The author and I connected through an organization but have never met yet though I have been fortunate to receive copies of her novels to review. With this one I believe she achieved a new level of connection to the human condition and it moved me deeply. Read this novel and go along on Daniella’s journey. You’ll be glad you did.
January 26, 2020
In Laura Marello’s GAUGUIN’S MOON, the narrator’s dead loved ones physically return to her, not in a ghoulish ’Monkey’s Paw’ way, but gently, nudging her toward a mid-life reappraisal, and ultimately toward a nightmare-inspired exploration of her mother’s part in the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests.
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