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Breath and Shadows |
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 Breath and Shadows byElla Leffland Ballantine Books 311 pages, 2000 ISBN 034543923-6 Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart Family bonds, especially sibling bonds, are very intricate, much like a spider’s web - seemingly frail and thin but in reality, unbreakable. Ella Leffland’s new novel, Breath and Shadows, explores these ties in a generational saga of a Denmark family, told in a series of three alternating sequences. Our first view at the Rosted family takes place in the 1890s. Grethe and Holgar are related by more than marriage, they are first cousins. While Leffland doesn’t get into the incestuous ramifications of this relationship, she does shape a picture of inherited madness that sweeps through the Rosted’s bloodline. Grethe is a housewife whose days are spent running her household of servants, spending time with her two sons, and enjoying a connection with her husband that has remained passionate and loving. The interdependence the couple shares goes beyond the normal bonds of matrimony. Grethe takes up with a stray cat, Olaf, who is scarred and wild, but relatively tame around his new mistress. She is the only human with whom Olaf will have any association. Readers get closer to Grethe and along with Holgar, watch her slowly go mad. She forces herself to respond to treatment and return to her family and home. The novel then leaps back to the early 1800s. Grethe’s great-grandfather, Thorkild, a disagreeable dwarf with an unpleasant demeanor, creates tension between him and his brother and sister, Holgar’s great-great-grandmother. At eighty-six, Thorkild never knew of love and family until he married twenty-two years earlier. His only son, killed in the battle of Leipzig, left behind a deceased wife and an infant son, with whom the old man refuses to have any contact. Thorkild’s grief ignites the flames of insanity, sending him on a mission that has irredeemable consequences. The story then jumps ahead to the early 1980s, to Grethe and Holgar’s twin grandchildren, Paula and Phillip. Paula has forsaken her wealthy lifestyle in favor of sculpting in a remote village, in the Swiss Jura Mountains. Paula's daughter believes her mother has lost her mind. Phillip, wealthy in his own right, cannot maintain a loving relationship and is estranged from his many children. He and Paula know little about their father, yet go on a quest to learn more about him. Their yearning for more information about their past struck a chord in me and about how little I know about my ancestors. A fourth narrative, the story of a cavern in the prehistoric era, ties the novel together, illustrating cohesiveness between the past and the present. Breath and Shadows is a unique look at the ties that bind and the ties that break. The sequence is a little difficult to grasp at first (1890s, 1810s, 1980s, 1890s, 1810s, 1980s, etc.). Once this becomes clear, the story gets to the roots, to the heart and to the soul of the Rosted family. |
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