Book Review: *Woman Made of Sand* by Joann Kobin

Woman Made of Sand by Joann Kobin

Back-of-the-book blurb:  ”It never entered my mind that anyone in my husband’s family would die,” muses Harriet Stedman at the beginning of this wise and tender first novel-in-stories. On the day of the family patriarch’s funeral, the hairline cracks in her marriage and life deepen as the hope for family unity recedes. If Harriet is anything, she is a truth-seeker, a compassionate woman who walks that uneasy line between love of her family and respect for her own vitality and desires.  Woman Made of Sand is the exquisitely rendered story of Harriet, her husband Phillip, and their two children, whose lives flirt with dissolution but then rise through pain to a new wholeness.

She is Too Fond of Books’ review: Woman Made of Sand is a collection of insightful stories which focus on Harriet Stedman.  Each chapter can stand alone, but together they present a complete portrait of Harriet, who narrates most of the stories; a few are told in the third person by an omniscient narrator.

Harriet is in her mid- to late-forties when we meet her; we follow closely the next six or seven years of her life, as her children grow, her relationship with their father (Phillip) changes, and she becomes more confident in her professional calling, while at the same time wrestling with insecurities about the lack of tight connection between her and her daughter, Matina.  I found this push-pull relationship, which appears in several chapters, to be most interesting.  Matina protects and defends Harriet, yet she seldom allows her mother to get truly close to her.

The chapters are arranged in rough chronolocial order.  Every once in a while Kobin dips into Harriet’s past – we visit with her on a family vacation when she was a child, and see the Stedmans when their own children were younger.  The bulk of the novel, however, stays with Harriet during what some would call her middle age years.

The language is, simply put, beautiful;  I got chills when I read (p. 83 in the chapter/story “Woman Made of Sand”):

He stood behind her and let his hand rest on her shoulder, close to her neck.  His hand said love in a secret sign language that she could feel but that Matina couldn’t see.

Through Harriet, Joann Kobin shows a range of emotions, internal struggles, and feelings that many find difficult to put into words.  She succeeds, however, conveying both tension and awareness, as in this passage from the chapter/story “Rain.”  (p. 6):

… He didn’t respond and as usual I continued, even though I knew I shouldn’t; I was trying to learn not to fill the silences, but to bear them.  I was trying to learn that there wasn’t an answer for every question or a reason for every decision.  I wanted to believe that he understood our life in the same way I did.

Harriet is sometimes the recipient of unwelcome life lessons, and she takes the reader to the virtual classroom with her.  As I’m watching my own children grow and change, I know that ultimately we want them to be wise and strong enough to be independent, yet we want to always protect them.  A neighbor tells Harriet (p. 63 in the chapter/story “What I Learned from Clara”):

And then your children get older and become more like regular people.  You go on loving them but there are times you don’t always like them.  Your children can’t save you from your own life, Harriet.  And only when you’re young do you think you can save them.  You’ve got to let people be who they are.

Obviously I was very taken with Kobin’s writing, and the story of Harriet Stedman.  I marked many passages, read several aloud to my husband, and put the book to the side a few times, so that I could let the words and thoughts settle within me.  I’ll end with one last passage; one of Harriet’s thoughts which mirrors how I felt when I turned the last page (p. 170 from “Will and Discipline”):

I had to tell myself that this dance hadn’t begun and wouldn’t end in the ways we’d been taught to believe.  It had its own wild and frightening sort of beauty.  I loved it and wanted more.

I enthusiastically recommend Woman Made of Sand.  Please don’t be put off by the “novel in stories” distinction; it reads as smoothly as a straight-forward novel.  You’ll find a complex cast of characters, centered around the multi-faceted Harriet Stedman.  Joann Kobin’s writing is precise, and capable of evoking unexpected emotions, as she gets so neatly into Harriet’s thoughts.  I loved it and wanted more.

About the author:  Joann Kobin’s short fiction has appeared in many journals, including New England Review, Ploughshares, and the Virginia Quarterly Reivew.  She has been a MacDowell Fellow and has taught fiction at Mt. Holyoke and Hampshire Colleges.

FTC Disclosure:  review copy provided by the publisher.