Title: When I Close My Eyes
Author: Elizabeth Musser
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: Bethany House
Release date: 5 November 2019
Pages: 352
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About the Book
Could she ever share the secret of The Awful Year?
There is one story that novelist Josephine Bourdillon shirked from writing. And now she may never have a chance. Trapped in her memories, she lies in a coma.
The man who put her there is just as paralyzed. Former soldier Henry Hughes failed to complete the kill. What’s more: he never received full payment–funds that would ensure surgery for his son.
As detectives investigate disturbing fan letters, a young but not-so-naïve Paige Bourdillon turns to her mother’s turbulent past for answers. Could The Awful Year be worse than the one they’re living now?
Set against the flaming hills of North Carolina and the peaceful shores of the Mediterranean Sea, When I Close My Eyes tells the story of two families struggling with dysfunction and finding that love is stronger than death.
Excerpt
She lay on her back, her mouth half-opened, the tube inserted, a string of drool escaping beside it, which was, excuse me, just gross. Her head was shaved on the right side, where the bullet had penetrated, and now she resembled a corpse beginning to be mummified, her head swathed in white gauze that ended right at her eyebrows. The rest of her face was very pale. The labored breathing, done by machines, reminded me of the even drone of the ceiling fan in my parents’ bedroom. Pretty spooky.
I sat beside the hospital bed and stared, blurry-eyed, at the apparition of my mother. My soft and kind fifty-something mother, petite, with dark brown eyes that either filled with compassion or fantasy, now closed. I wondered if they’d ever open again.
Coma. The word struck terror in my soul. The thing that most people did not emerge from or, if they did, emerged as vegetables. That my mother lay in this state, so still, so unalive, so lost from me, I could not grasp.
Yesterday we’d watched the sunrise from the porch of our home on Bearmeadow Mountain, both of us speechless as always before the vista of mountains spread out like a rippling carpet on every side.
“We live in a paradise,” Momma had said. “We get to watch God painting the mountains day after day after day.”
In the spring the mountains looked green and soft as velvet, but when October came around, the velvet blanket turned into an intricate tapestry of reds and oranges and deep yellows.
I blinked back tears at the memory, a sharp contrast to my surroundings. The hospital room, white and sterile, was filled with sights and sounds that came not from nature but from technology, and were indispensable in keeping my mother alive.
Yesterday, before I rushed off to school, I gave her a high five after reading her the latest letter from an adoring fan, and elderly woman who had found hope in one of Momma’s stories.
When I turned sixteen last year, I took over the job my older sister had been doing, answering the fan messages that came through her website or Facebook or email, doing the social media stuff. Momma paid me for it, of course. She was embarrassingly hopeless with technology. Her job was to write. And write. And write.
It was beyond fathoming that someone had deliberately tried to kill her.
Review
Confession: When I picked this book up for book club, I didn’t bother reading the description. I mean, yes, I had read the description at some point in the dim, relatively distant past, but I had forgotten the details. As a result, my eyes bugged out of my head when I got to the second page. Having one of your main characters deliberately shoot a woman coming out of a book shop is hardly the typical opening of a Christian fiction novel, especially one outside the suspense genre. Rebel that I am, I was hooked. And that didn’t change over the pages that followed. Not only was the story intriguing—although I knew who pulled the trigger, I didn’t know who had contracted the kill or why—but it also explored the themes of grace and forgiveness in an unforgettable and challenging way.
The story is told from three perspectives. The first is Henry’s, and despite the horror of what he did in the opening pages, I found myself quickly sympathetic to his situation and the way his life circumstances had shaped him. Musser did a superb job of capturing his voice, and his journey from pulling that trigger to the final pages of the novel was totally absorbing.
The second perspective is Paige, the younger of Josephine’s two daughters. Interestingly, Paige is the only member of her family who has turned away from their faith, having been disillusioned by hypocritical behaviour from respected adults in her life who were professing Christians. At the beginning of the book, we’re told she’s sixteen, but that didn’t register with me until much later in the book, and she read more like a woman in her early- to mid-twenties to me. That aside, I loved the way she tussled with her family’s faith in light of what had happened. There is more I would say if I could, but it’s too difficult to do so without giving spoilers.
The third perspective is Josephine’s, which gives the reader glimpses of her past while she remains in a coma. I won’t say any more about her point of view, again to avoid spoilers, but just sum up this review by saying this story really challenged me and resonated with me. Forgiveness and grace are powerful concepts. As Christians, we can so easily take them for granted when they’re extended to us by God, but how ready are we to offer them to others here on earth? The story also deals with mental health issues—again, something that really resonated with me.
A thoroughly absorbing, intriguing, and powerful read.
I purchased my own copy of this novel. As always, this review is my honest and unbiased opinion.
About the Author
ELIZABETH MUSSER writes ‘entertainment with a soul’ from her writing chalet—tool shed—outside Lyon, France. Elizabeth’s highly acclaimed, best-selling novel, The Swan House, was named one of Amazon’s Top Christian Books of the Year and one of Georgia’s Top Ten Novels of the Past 100 Years (Georgia Backroads, 2009). All of Elizabeth’s novels have been translated into multiple languages.
For over twenty-five years, Elizabeth and her husband, Paul, have been involved in missions’ work in Europe with International Teams. The Mussers have two sons, a daughter-in-law and three grandchildren who all live way too far away in America.
Connect with Elizabeth: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest
Wonderful review. I like the sound of this one.
Thank you! It was a great read.