The Weight of the Heart by Susana Aikin

The Weight of the Heart by Susana Aikin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Weight of the Heart is a beautifully written story of three sisters, their domineering father and the house in Madrid where the girls came of age. The novel is told from the point of view of the youngest sister, Anna and within a unique situation that makes the story fascinating.

The story of the three sisters is expressed with clarity, as Susana Aikin carefully explores their relationships with each other, with their lovers, and most importantly, with their overbearing father. But that said, there is also another soul that is explored, the soul of a house.

The time has come for the sisters to sell the home they inherited. They put the house on the market after their father has been gone for a couple of years, but they don't find a buyer. All three of the women believe this failure is due to the fall-out from the conflicts and tragedies that occurred within those walls. Julia, the middle child, finds someone she believes can solve this issue.

“This time, though, Julia has gone over the top. She’s been hammering me [Anna] about bringing in this woman to cleanse our haunted house. And insisting that this person whom she calls a santera, an energy healer of sorts, and whom, mark you, she is picking up from a nursing home this morning, has supernatural powers capable of overcoming today’s conked-out real estate market and propitiating a sale. What word did she use? A limpieza?”

Anna, Julia, and the oldest sister, Marion, meet at the house with Delia, the santera, and her assistant, Constantine. Delia and Constantine begin the process of cleansing, while the sisters are left to ponder the memories the house contains. The most important of these are the ways their father affected their lives.

“His love was in his fight to provide for us: food, a beautiful house, a bountiful education. His gifts, money and things money could buy. But his passion could only be channeled through jealousy, through possession. And loving him back was difficult, a balancing act between standoffish devotion and a terror of disappointing him. Even as girls we knew that we had a wounded animal for a father.”

Although The Weight of the Heart explores Anna's dysfunctional family in a captivating manner, there is more to Susana Aikin's novel. The calm, dedication of Delia, the santera, to her spiritual mission is riveting. So are the relationships of the sisters with their lovers, each unique, yet sharing a common tragedy. And, as with Aikin's first novel, We Shall See the Sky Sparkling, her poetic prose is a joy to read.


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The Incident by John Montesano

The Incident by John Montesano
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you enjoy crime novels with lots of action and suspense The Incident is for you. The characters in this well-written novel are complex and fascinating, especially its main protagonist. This is a hard book to put down with enough tension in the plot to keep the pages turning.

The story is about Chase Barnes, a police officer who has an incident in his background that has affected him psychologically. His inability to get his act together is so extreme, the upper echelon of the Paterson, NJ police force has decided to let him go. But his captain, who is also his friend, suggests that he go out on his own. Chase can become a private detective and the force will help him with resources as well as by throwing cases his way. This plan seems like something he's well-suited for and, since he doesn't have any other options, that's what he does.

Chase's wife, who is a public school teacher, asks him to look into one of her students, a twelve-year-old boy whom she feels is getting into trouble. Coincidentally, Captain Fitzgerald asks Chase to look into the same boy, who has now gone missing. The book takes off from there, covering the case he's working on as well as slowly revealing the specifics of the incident in his background. John Montesano clearly knows the politics of the public school system in Paterson New Jersey and has thoroughly researched the politics in that city's police department. The book has enough facts to give it a realistic feel.

Although there is some graphically written violence, that is to be expected in this genre. I recommend this book to anyone who likes action packed thrillers.



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