Book Review: Any Bitter Thing

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

Any Bitter Thing     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Monica Wood
Class/Genre:   Fiction
Chronicle Books, 2005, 345 pages

Monica Wood has fashioned a beautiful tale of love, loss, coming of age, and so much more I have trouble preparing a concise list!

A sister and her younger brother are left alone when all other members of their family die within month of each other. The sister marries and she and her husband send the brother to high school, college and on to Catholic seminary. When in turn they both die in a plane crash their two year old daughter Lizzy is left in the care of her uncle, now an ordained priest.

Seven years elapse in which Lizzy thrives under his all encompassing love and care, but a tragic combination of narrow mindedness and misunderstanding result in child molestation charges against Father Mike. Lizzy is sent to the home of an estranged aunt, and Father Mike disappears.

Wood moves the reader back and forth in both time and place as well as providing shifting point of view between Lizzy and her guardian uncle. In gradually unfolding passages we meet Father Mike as a fully human person with all the desires and hopes felt by every parent and indeed by every normal man. And we begin to see that Lizzy has been in a kind of emotional limbo since she was wrenched from her all too brief happy childhood. We witness a second unfolding as Lizzy begins to come alive.

Much much more awaits the reader in this beautiful, compelling book.

Woodstock - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Woodstock - RAM