Book Review: My Soul To Keep
Posted on | May 4, 2010 | No Comments
My Soul To Keep
Tananarive Due
http://www.tananarivedue.com/
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Jessica has the perfect marriage, but her husband has a secret. He’s a killer. He’s also an immortal with blood that heals.
That summary does no justice to the scope of this novel. It’s remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of it is the slowly oppressive style, the attention to detail and historical accuracy and vivid, realistic character portraits. It’s also remarkable in that it’s a fantasy novel in which most of the characters are black.
Jessica doesn’t find her husband’s secret sexy or exciting like she might in a lesser novel. She doesn’t stay with him after she finds out he’s a murderer. She reacts with horror, as you would, but at the same time has trouble breaking off the family bond she had with him. She is a Christian, but her religion is neither touted as the one true way nor made to look silly or insignificant or false; it simply is a huge part of her, and informs how she reacts to the knowledge that there is real, true magic in the world. Dawit, the immortal whose story this is as much as, if not more than, Jessica’s, goes through a hell of his own trying to protect his family and keep his secret, even as he bloodies his hands again and again.
The plot takes elements that have become downright cliché in genre novels – immortal lover, idyllic American home hiding terrible secrets, a mother protecting her child, an ancient occult order hunting the protagonists – and applies research, realism and a sense of real tragedy to them. On occasion I found this incongruity jarring, jerking me out of the novel and back into my analytical head, despite the fact that I love the idea of reclaiming clichés in this sense. The only other criticism I can levy is that the plot’s slow inevitability sometimes made me impatient and I found myself sneaking peeks at coming events just to assure myself I hadn’t figured out absolutely everything that was to come, yet. I hadn’t – and in any case, the rich storytelling made every turn of the plot, anticipated or not, a delicious read. I can see, though, how this might make it difficult reading for some. I find that sometimes a book and its reader need to match, or the rhythm of the novel might make reading it impossible, despite its length or literary excellence. I was just a touch out of rhythm with My Soul To Keep.
This is not a very fun book to read, but it’s compelling, powerful and just plain impressive. It’s the sort of novel that makes you look askance at the other fiction you’ve been reading and think, “Shouldn’t they have tried a little harder?” Due is a brilliant author, and I am happy she chose to write in one of my favourite genres.
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