The Silk Road by Jane Summer
I’ll be honest. I’m behind again on my book blogs. I have three more to blog about and each of them deserve their own blog so here goes.
Set in what I am guessing is a place you might not find marked on any map, the suburban town of Hell, New York, The Silk Road is a story about adolescence and one adolescent in particular. This would be the story of Paige Bergman, who has Swedish blood and reads French existentialists in her part of the upstate NY world. Paige grows up in the 70s near a towering bilboard whose message echoes throughout the book: Have You Been Seriously Injured? One gets the impression that Paige has been seriously injured but not by an auto accident or anything of that sort. Merely, just by having a mother she could in no way love who treats her as inferior to her brother just because she is a girl. Paige’s mother is horrified to walk in on her dressed up as a male rock star and discourages her from going to college even though her older brother is supported in college financially. The comments she makes are subtle but incisive and any empathy her father could muster is muffled by the fact that since he had a little accident with electricity, he doesn’t seem to form any new memories.
Paige is really more than anything trying to find herself. At camp, they go on a fieldtip to Woodstock and she sees Janis Joplin on stage and seems grateful for the fact that it is a woman in music that is up there being appreciated. She is politically conscious and somewhat reckless and more than anything, she wants to be the receiver of love from a suburban housewife. It’s not clear what exactly Paige wants from this relationship most of the time and it is possible Paige doesn’t know herself. There’s some confusion over orientation and roles and probably what Paige yearns for the most is to have a mother like Mrs. Gallagher, the housewife she falls in love with.
I grew up in upstate NY myself, actually, although my town wasn’t given such a quaint name and I have a wonderful mother. But I could definitely relate to the feel of the town itself. I often found this book to be engaging and rather comical. My guess is that everyone can, in some way however small, answer that billboard saying, “Have You Been Seriously Injured?” in a way Paige Bergman might understand.
(now playing: The Fall: Heads Roll)