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Sunday, June 08, 2008
Search for Identity Leads Way To Renewed Sense of Belonging
By Review By Robert Woltman
“Anybody Any Minute” by Julie Mars
St. Martin's Press. 342 pp. $24.95
Ellen Kenny, 40-something and just been fired from her high-powered New York job, flees boredom and a stale marriage to visit her kid sister, Karen, in Montreal. Enroute, she stumbles upon a dilapidated backroads farmhouse that's a vision from a recurring dream. Miraculously, it's for sale and cheap enough for Ellen to buy it with a credit card. She does and when she moves in, mayhem ensues.
Instead of being “woman who runs with the wolves” and hippie Earth Mother, Ellen finds herself contending with too many bugs, too much dirt, bad plumbing and the antics of two local middle-aged eccentrics.
Rodney is a chain saw sculptor, soul-scarred son of the mysterious and long-deceased Viola, the crone who had lived and died in squalor in Ellen's dream house. Rayfield is a bearish, beer-can-collecting biker pining for his equally sizeable estranged wife, his “Doublewide.”
Ellen soon discovers a spiritual bond with Rodney and Rayfield. It deepens when she takes in her toddler nephew after Karen rushes to her husband, critically injured in Peru.
Albuquerque author Julie Mars' scenes with Ellen and her nephew are especially touching, as are those portraying the struggles between Ellen and her straight-laced husband. Her description of city and country life are colorful and evocative.
Where does Ellen's search for her lost self end? Make her often charming and whimsical summer adventure a bit of yours and find out.
Robert Woltman is an Albuquerque writer.