We are given bits and pieces of this Wayne’s background but things are unclear as to who he really is or represents.įrankly, Cassandra’s voice is sorely missed when the narrators switch. He takes Wayne’s name, investigates the family, meets up with Cassandra, and they quickly fall for each other. This man is convinced her brother is still alive and is shadowing him. Suddenly, midway through the book, the narration flips over from Cassandra to a man she is making love to. The intense grief is real and halfway through you wonder if this theme can be sustained much longer, where is the resolution? Each elation she feels at seeing him is immediately crushed by realizing his death once more. There are multiple dreams of her brother dying in different scenarios, each time under Cassandra’s watch. What follows are fruitless years of sessions with out-of-touch psychiatrists. Her mother will not admit to his death and starts a foundation to assist finding missing children, at one point traumatizing her daughter with “If he’s alive, that means you didn’t kill him!” Cassandra’s father distantly accepts that their bonds are lost and her grandmother pointedly asks her what she did with that boy. He was dead.” The irrefutable truth is this young girl’s burden to bear alone.
She passed out, did not actually see him die, and the body was never recovered. Twelve year old Cassandra tries in vain to save her seven year old brother Wayne from drowning.
The Furrows is a bold exploration of memory and mourning that twists unexpectedly into a story of mistaken identity, double consciousness, and the wishful-and sometimes willful-longing for reunion with those we've lost. Namwali Serpell's remarkable new novel captures the uncanny experience of grief, the way the past breaks over the present like waves in the sea. Or can it? Then one day, in another accident, C meets a man both mysterious and familiar, a man who is also searching for someone and for his own place in the world. Here is her brother's face, the light in his eyes, the way he seems to recognize her, too. But their mother can't give up hope and launches an organization dedicated to missing children.Īs C grows older, she sees her brother everywhere: in bistros, airplane aisles, subway cars. Their father leaves, starts another family elsewhere. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt. One day, when they're alone together, there is an accident and Wayne is lost forever.
I want to tell you how it felt.Ĭassandra Williams is twelve her little brother, Wayne, is seven. How do you grieve an absence? A brilliantly inventive novel about loss and belonging, from the award-winning author of The Old Drift.
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