Title: The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender Author: Leslye Walton
Published: March 27, 2014
Genre(s): Magical Realism
Page Count: 301
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava—in all other ways a normal girl—is born with the wings of a bird.
In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naïve to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the Summer Solstice celebration.
That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava’s quest and her family’s saga build to a devastating crescendo.
By and large, I’ve had great success with magical realism. These are books that bend the rules and invite curious readers to wield their imaginations—the books that leave a lingering taste of beauty behind. I began reading The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender expecting to enjoy myself, but maybe in this case, my expectation was off. At best, I was vaguely pleased with this; at worst, completely ambivalent. The truth, however, lies somewhere in between.
I think what most bothered me about this book was that for a novel supposedly about Ava Lavender, it wasn’t really about Ava Lavender. The first half of the book chronicles the lives of Ava’s mother and grandmother, and then a good section after the halfway point awkwardly transitions from Ava’s foremothers to the “protagonist” itself. So maybe 40 percent of The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender is actually concerned with Ava’s story.
Also bothersome for me was how nondescript Ava’s story is. After all the things that had happened to her mother and grandmother, I was expecting something of equal or greater value. Instead we got an extremely bland romance and a rushed confrontation with a poorly developed antagonist. The ending was all about Ava’s empowerment and coming of age, but the steps to that point were dull for me, even with the presence of magical tendencies.
I don’t deny that this book is well-written and unique, even as far as magical realism goes. Leslye Walton’s debut shows promise for her continued career, and I can see myself picking up another of her novels in the future, but the story itself was too bland for me, especially where Ava was considered. Even though she was the narrator, I hardly felt her presence in the book. I liked pretty much every other character more than I liked Ava—probably because every other characters had more depth of personality than Ava did.
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender shows a lot of promise, and Walton’s writing style is a perfect fit for the magical realism genre, but this book did not come together like it could have. It’s frustrating to see a lot of potential that doesn’t go anywhere, and that’s exactly what I feel about this. It could have been so good, but instead it was only mediocre.
