Book Review: The Good Works of Ayela Linde by Charlotte Forbes - Page 4

As the book proceeds, we suspect that time does not proceed with the same precision. This becomes obvious in the final story, "Dreaming of You." This is told by Leyla (note the partial acronym), the grandchild everyone agrees most closely resembles her grandmother. It is now five years since Ayela died, yet she is fresh in Leyla's thoughts. In fact, Leyla suspects that her grandmother "insinuates herself into my thoughts and elbows her way front and center." Something is happening that is stronger than memory. Leyla, the promising artist, flees a dry and pretentious family gathering in Boston for the heat of Santa Rosalia.

She hopes to find evidence of her grandmother in the town where she had passed all her life. At first, she is disappointed. It seems no one can remember such a woman. But as the days pass, she discovers a memory of a different sort. Ayela's presence does indeed remain, but in a mysterious way that sidesteps the passage of time.

In the book's final sentence, Forbes shows that the two concerns I have teased out are really threads from the same cloth. Leyla expresses gratitude to her grandmother "[f]or the feeling of being out of time, beyond the tyranny of thought, wholly alone, and yet, for a moment, possessed of the expansive grace that ties one to all creatures." We learn of Ayela Linde through multiple viewpoints. Perhaps the good work of Ayela Linde is the "expansive grace" which connects these seemingly disparate voices so that none speaks in isolation, not even in the isolation imposed by the passage of time.

In The Good Works of Ayela Linde, Charlotte Forbes has produced a work lovingly crafted. It deserves a like measure of care in its reading. I have hinted at the richness which a close reading will yield. But don't expect too much unless you are prepared, like the narrators of these stories, to bring something of yourself to the task.

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