Sweet Hearts

by Melanie Rae Thon

Fusing family myth with American history, award-winning author Melanie Rae Thon exposes the never-ending chain of wandering and abandonment, the disappearance of mothers, and the drowning of people through the adventures of Flint, a sixteen-year-old boy that is half child, half full-grown criminal, and his little sister, Cecile.

After eight years in juvenile detention and an escape from the Landers School for Boys, Flint returns home to the one person he loves and trust, his sister Cecile. Together they rob and terrorize a local doctor, steal their mother’s car, and strike out alone on a desperate journey south to the Crow Indian Reservation their ancestors once lived upon.

But is Cecile Flint’s accomplice or his hostage? No one knows. Only Marie Zimmer, the children’s deaf aunt, understands the strange logic of their crimes, desires, fears, and devotion to each other. Marie has stories to tell, and though she will not speak, she is the only one bold enough to share the tale of Flint and Cecile.

In this devastatingly passionate story, the tales of a silent woman struggling to unravel the web of generational family violence are revealed through the celebration of life in the midst of sorrow. In the fierce light of her imagination, Marie interweaves the past and the present, inventing a language of signs subtle enough to illuminate the mysterious ways we are all connected.

Genres: Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 4, 2001

About the author

Melanie Rae Thon is a Professor of English at the University of Utah.

Reviews

[Angela M · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars if I could

“I am the daughter of a drowned woman.
I have stories to tell but do not speak.
Who will trust me?”

I do trust our narrator Marie almost immediately, but I just don’t know what to make of this story. There is so much pain and dysfunction, I found it difficult to read and consequently I am finding that it is difficult to write about. There is something so sad and resigned about all of the characters except the narrator, Marie who somehow can still grasp at hope in spite of all that happens. It's the kind of book where you can feel the hopelessness.

This is a dysfunctional family going back in years, as Marie tells of the family history. The main story centers on a wayward boy, Flint whose crimes begin at age 6 and now at 16 after years spent in reform school comes home and leads his 11 year old sister, Cecile into his life of crime .


“There’s no safe place in this story. I don’t want to be the mother of lost children. I don’t want to be the boy raised in a cell, or the sister who loves him. I don’t want to be a good samaritan, one of those kind strangers who tries to help.” This is the story in brief, and the awful details are in the book.

The writing is beautiful at times but the story is so ugly. I was thankful for the glimmer of hope that Marie brings. Recommended if you think you can take the sadness and grief because the writing deserves a chance.


Thank you Open Road Integrated Media and NetGalley.

[Kelly Gunderman]

I received an e-book copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was one of the most depressing books I've read in a long time. I knew what the book was about going into it, but wow, every single chapter of this book was just horribly depressing.

The story is told from the point of view of a deaf woman, which is different from how most novels tell their stories. The children in the story, Flint and Cecile, are the children of her sister, Frances. Frances isn't exactly up for mother of the year award, especially when Flint escapes from a juvenile detention center (he has quite a list of crimes behind him), and decides that he has no intention of going back. So, he takes his little sister (the relationship between the two is very...bothersome, to say the least), and they try and make a run for it, doing some downright terrible things in order to get away.
The writing style made it very difficult to concentrate on the story (actually, there were like three or four stories going on within this book, which made it even more difficult to concentrate), because the author detailed so many different characters, settings, and plots in a very poetic, almost lyrical, writing form. This writing style isn't a bad writing style, which I think is better suited for short stories (which I would love to read by this author, because I think she could really do some wonders with short stories).

The book itself isn't a bad a book...I knew pretty much from the beginning how the book would end, it's rather predictable. But I really didn't think it would be as horribly depressing as it was. I think that was the main problem I had with this book, aside from the writing style, and the fact that there were just too many different stories (like flashbacks) jammed into one short novel.

I considered not finishing this book several times, because the book and I just weren't a very good fit, but I'm glad I finished it.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting and beautiful, in prose that nearly sings, SWEET HEARTS both thrilled me and broke my heart. But isn't that what great and powerful writing should do?

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Melanie Rae Thon’s Sweet Hearts is a shattering, glorious book of hope and grace and, dare I say it, truth. Our narrator, our compassionate guide, is a deaf woman who sees and hears with lucidity. She tells the story of her sister’s children, sixteen-year old Flint and his eleven year-old sister Cecile, of the crime Flint commits, of Cecile’s complicity and her moment of choice. These two children, who hold center stage in our narrator’s consciousness, drive the story she tells. But this is also her story, of how she lost her hearing, of her mother Rina who drowned in the lake, who swam with the ancient sturgeon, who remembered her American Indian heritage, the reservation of her ancestors. It is the story of the father our narrator lives with and loves. She says of him, “In summer, chicadees land in my father’s palms. I am telling you the truth.” And later, in the heartrending passage about her father’s attempts to remove the snow from the roof, she says, “The sadness of a lifetime can converge as you try to remove it.” In these words, in their metaphor, the strands of the story converge.

Kafka said, “I think we should only read the kind of books that wound and stab us.” Melanie Rae Thon has written such a book. Her characters struggle with the knowledge that “sorrow like the wind is relentless.” She writes lyrical prose, a large story, that, amazingly, like Kafka, reads with the force and simplicity of the parable. But unlike Kafka, she writes a book of redemption that moves forward relentlessly toward that place where, in our narrator’s words, “the heart seeks its own rapture.”

[bee kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

fascinating prose. fascinating dysfunction. the first time i finished this book, i lay in my bed and thought for a long time about the characters in this story whose pieces i could see in people in my life. the lyricism of the writing can at times be taxing, but witnessing thon's ability is ultimately enriching. a dazzling sense of unease accompanied every moment i spent with this story. it's gross and upsetting, but captivating.

[Carlee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn’t even finish this book when I read it for school last year. The relationship dynamics made me SO uncomfortable.

[Daniel Barrera · Rating 5 out of 5]

So sad yet so beautiful. Humanized the outcasts we many times ignore.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through the eyes of Marie, a deaf woman, we learn of the difficult, often violent, lives of her sister’s two children, Flint and Cecile, and the community they grow up in. It’s a brutal and uncaring world, and the children's experiences are heart-rending. It’s not always an easy read stylistically though, with the language sometimes overtaking narrative coherence. The reader needs to concentrate to keep track of who’s speaking, and there are perhaps too many minor characters. However, once you get into the rhythm, it’s a powerful reading experience, and the writing is lyrical if sometimes too dense. The themes – culpability, responsibility, compassion, and, perhaps most importantly, the fate of Native Americans in an often uncaring society over successive generations – are powerfully conveyed. Flint’s descent into delinquency is particular hard-hitting and the descriptions of the justice system, especially that for juveniles, is extremely chilling. There’s much sadness in this book, much tragedy, and it felt convincing and authentic. By the end I had been carried away by the emotional heft of the novel, and overall found it a haunting and deeply moving book, if slightly overwritten.

[J.I. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is beautiful and heartbreaking. In it, we hear the story of Flint, a juvenile delinquent who escapes from his prison at the beginning of the story and who will go on to do something much more horrible. But to tell the story of this horrible thing, of the suffering to come, we must see the rest of his story, the rest of his crimes. We must know about his mother and his father (and his step fathers), we must know of his relation to his sister. We must know what shaped his mother and her mother and hers, we must see the town, we must see the victims, we must see the whole society.

In this way, and with her mastery of lyric language, Thon weaves a tapestry of suffering and we see the crime as not just an act, but as an outcome of history, and while Thon never undoes the horrors of the crimes, nor condones the criminals for committing them, there is a tenderness and a mercy that is extended here that is truly marvelous. Too often we see a crime as an event, and then are given short reasons for why it was done, but here we see what created the person who would do such a thing, not only why they did it, and how everyone around is affected.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely heartbreaking and lyrical. Thon weaves a haunting cyclical narrative told through an intimate point-of-view of a deaf aunt whose niece and nephew try to escape their past only to create their future within a flawed and equally troubled human world.

Flint is a juvenile delinquent on the run after escaping prison. He takes his little sister, Cecile, with him on his journey out of state. But a series of misguided judgments, bravado, and ignorance end disastrously.

Thon has the ability to transform the most grim circumstances into holy redemption through her keen observation and mystical use of language. I cried from sorrow, joy, and fear throughout reading this novel. I am left a changed person through walking in someone else's moccasins.

A must read for anyone needing forgiveness or wanting to understand those who do. A must read for anyone living in the human condition.

[Zen Cho · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought this was all right. It did tend to go on a bit -- I'm not a very patient reader of poetry, so it's prolly a testament to Thon's skill that I was able to keep reading instead of getting bored and wandering off before she got to the end.

Full disclosure: after reading the book I Googled the author so I'd know whether to tag this as "written by poc" or not and I was a bit turned off by an interview with her in which the interviewer mentioned "the clumsy term 'cultural appropriation'". The general consensus seemed to be that discussion about who has the right to tell certain stories should be ignored because if you listened to this, what stories would you ever have the right to write? Again the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" argument. I think this is just lazy, frankly. But I also think Thon writes better than she interviews.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful but sad book. It took me a while to get the rhythm of the prose -- it's oblique, and it has its own cadence -- and the character relationships can be hard to grasp initially (even with the helpful family tree at the beginning of the book). But there's such richness to the book and the characterizations -- such sadness and such despair but also real humanity. Many blurbs call books "haunting;" I feel that this one really qualifies. It's an impressive achievement when you think how inhuman or nonhuman Flint, Cecile, and Marie all seem in certain ways -- and yet they really resonate.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This previously unknown (to me) author really covers everything! The story is about juvenile delinquents and how they get that way. More of a legend really, dating back generations; how native heritage gets lost and broken, how some times mothers don't know how to take care of their children. Set in rural Montana, near a lake that I love, I completely enjoyed reading about the beauty and cruelty of nature. The voices change often, from the children to their deaf aunt. The birds songs even aid in the telling

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was some brilliant writing in this novel about a couple of kids on the run. This novel is told from the perspective of the deaf aunt of the children and she fills us in on all the family's sordid history before the inevitable conclusion. My criticism is that novel is uneven, like thirty-some-odd short stories strung together. The changes of style within the same voice I found distracting.

[Leeann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thon is an incredibly gorgeous writer and I love her style, but there were places where this novel really dragged and parts that felt disconnected from the rest. I think she's better for short stories, really. Still, there was a lot to like about this and some of the characters will be on my mind for a long time to come.

[Joey Beatty]

I immediately want to reread this book. It worried my soul. It got inside my pores and under my nails. I read it while on the road and then I looked at the road differently and through a few tears. Also, I want to read everything she has written as quickly as possible. I love a book that makes you want to write your own heart out.

[Debbie Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very poetic, and when she stayed on the story, it was compelling. The writing felt distracted and seemed to have an agenda at times. I lost interest. She's a gorgeous writer and I would be interested in her short stories, but the novel didn't carry enough drive for me. I couldn't stay with it.

[Laura Toto · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a fan of Melanie Rae Thon, I feel this book is disjointed in it's story telling and ambiguous. There are too many characters and too many generations for 230 pages. It seems she is trying to incorporate too many lives in such a short read without any clarity.

[Ibrahim]

hi so sweet

[Jocelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decently depressing; decent language-use, although Thon becomes aware that she's using some pretty great phrasing--or her characters are.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

lyrical and heartbreaking in Thon's ususal original style....I have to re-read it again, as there was just so much happening and I was enthralled by the gorgeous writing

[Amy Gourley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't get past the first few pages. Didn't like the writing style much.

[Keleigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haunting and poetic. I found myself imitating her writing for months afterward.