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Cassandra understood the media cycle well enough to know that Callie would disappear within a day or two, that she was a place-maker in the current story, the kind of footnote dredged up in the absence of new developments. Callie had been forgotten and would be forgotten again. Her child had been forgotten, left in this permanent limbo – not officially dead, not even officially missing, just unaccounted for, like an item on a manifest. A baby, an African-American boy, had vanished, with no explanation and yet no real urgency. His mother, almost certainly the person responsible, had defeated the authorities with silence. – from Life Sentences, page 12 -

Cassandra Fallows is casting around for her next book idea after having published two highly successful memoirs and one floundering novel, when an evening newscast brings up a name from her past. Calliope Jenkins had shared an elementary school classroom with Cassandra. She was later held for seven years in prison for refusing to reveal the whereabouts of her infant son…who is still missing and presumed dead. Now released from prison, Calliope provides the perfect backdrop for another memoir of sorts for Cassandra. Cassandra returns to her childhood home in Baltimore to try to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Calliope and her son, and ends up reconnecting with her old friends. What she discovers are buried secrets about her own life, and another perspective on what constitutes truth.

Laura Lippman takes her time in developing her characters in Life Sentences, switching back and forth from the past to the present, and giving the reader multiple perspectives of Cassandra’s life. Cassandra is not wholly likable (she has a tendency to go to bed with other women’s husbands and seems oblivious to how her literary portrayal of the people in her life might impact them) yet I found myself wanting to give her a chance at redemption. Part of the conflict in the novel is internal – that which lies within Cassandra herself. Although her goal was to write a book and not rethink her life, Cassandra ultimately is forced to deal with her own weaknesses, learn another way of seeing the world, and revisit her version of the truth.

Lippman apparently used to write straight forward mysteries and suspense novels, but in Life Sentences the mystery takes second stage to the deeper issues raised in the book. Using the historical backdrop of the civil rights movement in Baltimore and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Lippman explores the difficult subject of race relations. Cassandra’s unfaithful father leaves her mother to marry a black woman. Cassandra’s childhood friends are all black (she is white) and the division between them (and their later anger around Cassandra’s memoir) centers largely around unspoken race issues. One huge event in Cassandra’s life (when she is attacked by a group of white girls in her school) takes on a different meaning when seen outside of Cassandra’s narrow view and is explained from the viewpoint of a black friend who witnessed the attack but did nothing to stop it.

Another huge theme in the book is that of memory and perspective – how two people can experience the same thing and yet remember it differently. As Cassandra tries to mine her past for her next book, she discovers her memories about important events vary significantly from that of her friends.

Ultimately Lippman gets to the mystery and provides an answer for her readers, but she arrives there after a meandering journey through the lives of her central characters. And that is perhaps my only complaint with the novel – it moves a bit slowly at times. This is not a book a reader will plow through in one sitting. Despite this minor complaint, I can recommend Life Sentences to those readers who enjoy their mysteries character-driven vs. plot driven.

Please visit my TLC Book Tour post which includes a guest post by the author.

Life Sentences by Laura Lippman

Pages: 344
First Published: Mar. 10, 2009
Genre: fiction
Rating: 4/5

First sentence:

“Well,” the bookstore manager said, “it is Valentine’s Day.”

Comments: Cassandra Fallows, author of two memoirs and one novel, travels back to her Baltimore neighbourhood to research her new book. Her first memoir centred around the lives of her middle class white family and that of her three best friends who are black and of mixed financial backgrounds. There was a fifth black girl on the outskirts of her group of friends whom Cassie never really paid any attention to but it has just now been revealed to her that this girl was questioned in the death of her infant son and then spent seven years in jail for contempt for pleading the fifth and has never uttered one word about her missing, presumed murdered son. This is what Cassie wants to base her new book on and as she travels home she finds that no one from the past wants to talk about that incident. It seems she has come to uncover a secret so big that many people have been silenced for what very little they do know and no one wants to open those doors again. But while unraveling other families secrets Cassie finds herself face to face with a secret from her very own family’s past which she has not known of and must face before she can face anyone else’s secrets.

I really enjoyed this book. I’ve read one other Lippman book and it was not a stand-alone as this one is. I had expected this to be a mystery but, in fact, I would not classify it as such, nor would I call it a thriller, crime or even a suspense. It is much more akin to what I think of as Southern Fiction (with the eccentric characters and the race relations) but being set in Baltimore takes that option away. What we have here is really non-genre fiction. A story of people, a select group of people, and how a secret affected their lives.

Lippman is wonderful at characterization. There is a big company of players in this book and the main characters are fleshed out, fully realized with full backgrounds and flawed human beings. The secondary characters are less developed but they certainly consist of an eccentric cast. While the plot mainly focuses on Cassandra and her life and relationship with her parents and friends from the past, often including passages from her published book of memoirs, the tracking down of the girl who grew up to possibly kill her own son forms a cohesive plot that pulls the whole together and gives an enjoyable mystery to solve with a satisfying ending, for this reader. But other readers looking for a traditional mystery may not find the ending quite so satisfying. Not having read many Lippman books I can’t say whether this book is typical or not of her stand-alones but if you are looking for a traditional mystery/thriller/crime book this is not the book you are looking for. However, if you are looking for a compelling read with an intriguing plot that includes a secret to unravel then by all means you’ll have found your book with Life Sentences.

P.S. I can’t help but mention that I just love the cover of my edition!