Rose Solari’s debut novel, A Secret Woman, is a double helix narrative following Louise Terry, a feminist artist seeking love and inspiration in the art circles, and bars, of the DC area, and her mother, Margaret, whose recent death has unearthed a mysterious manuscript about a woman with the gift of light, also named Margaret, a nun who lived, suffered, and sacrificed in the Middle Ages.
Solari sets up a mystery wrapped in a social comedy of errors, wrapped in a family drama. There layers to her storytelling, the doppleganger characters living in various timelines, and the characters own artisitic perspective of the events in question. Its not just because the novel has a mystic heart that the publisher put a celtic knot in the cover design, its because Solari has served up a well paced novel rich in design.
Why was crazy Mom interested in the saints? Why did crazy Mom cheat? Was there a curse? More than one possibly? Why did she leave her children they she did? These questions of family are one layer of the conflict Louise has to maneuver. But Louise has her own spiraling conflicts to navigate as well, those of art, integrity, and self-identity. And both women, mother and daughter, share many of the same character defects, struggle with what it means to be a woman in the world, and struggle with what it means to love.
Solari’s narrative has plenty of hooks to hang agendas upon--the life of artists, priests, the post feminism women’s movement, but the novel remains a story about women and men, and about their existential struggle for identity. Women are the main focus of her narrative ear and eye, but the men's conflicts parralel the women, enriching both.
Her pacing is quick, and the conversation heady, often balancing sex and discussions about art, painting, music, and writing. As Louise’s art brings her to London, the narrative opens up with regards to her mother Margaret, and the mysterious saint or would be saint she spent the last years of her life researching. Here with the introduction of witchcraft into the spiritual mystery Solaris allows her characters to seek their own path, their own light. Which of course leads Louise on more soul-searching. There's a sub plot about a missing statue that gives more insight about her mother, through the eyes of her alcoholic writer lover, Lawerence Ware, who almost becomes the closest thing to a bad guy in the tale. Mostly A Secret Woman is just that, women discovering or keeping secrets, and wondering what is the point of it all.
Reading A Secret Woman reminded me a bit of reading Bridget Jones, for like Jones, Solari’s Louise just wants to do the right thing, but her life won’t let her, either her family, or lover, or ex, or even the priest she befriends offer more and more opportunities for Louise to make another mistake as she continues to grow up. This is not to say A Secret Woman is a comedy, but it is a comedy of errors and manners, especially with regards to the art and indie music scene Solaris captures so well. Solaris is writing a very different type of book than the two Jones appeared in, Louise is not a clown, she's transformed by her experience, not a saint, but a more enlightened woman.
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