Transforming Pandora by Carolyn Mathews
| Transforming Pandora by Carolyn Mathews | |
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| Category: General Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: A well-written, thought-provoking book which can be read on different levels and which kept me turning the pages long after I should have been asleep. Carolyn Mathews popped into Bookbag Towers to chat to us. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 356 | Date: January 2013 |
| Publisher: Roundfire Books | |
| ISBN: 978-1780997452 | |
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When we first meet Pandora Armstrong in the spring of 2003 she's grieving for her husband, Mike, who had died just a few weeks before. It hadn't been his first heart attack and he had reduced his workload but this attack was fatal. He was only in his fifties and Pandora feels that he'd been snatched away from her as they'd only been married for a few years. When a friend suggests that she goes with her to an Evening of Clairvoyance she runs out of excuses to refuse and although she's not exactly convinced by what she hears there's a lingering doubt. A spirit voice mentioned her children and Pandora was adamant that she didn't have any children - it's actually quite a sore point - but that wasn't true of Mike.
Pandora and Mike might only have been married a short time, but they first met in the seventies when Pandora was in her late teens and you could have put your money on a happy ending at that stage (if this had been mere chick lit) because they seemed so right for each other. Fate, pressure from society, call it what you will, had other ideas and before long Pan was working in Spain with her mother (who pretended to be her aunt) and hoping that her father - back in London - didn't get to know too much about what she was really doing. For a man who allowed his daughter to be called Pandora Fry (Pan Fry? Pan Lid?) he was doing his best to be a responsible parent.
Whilst Pandora might have been a sceptic about the 'Evening of Clairvoyance' she has a history of being drawn to the esoteric (I think we can blame her mother for that...) and finds that she has raised a spirit. Enoch gives her a great deal to think about and allows her to see a path through her grief to a new life. Now I'll confess that I'm rather more than a sceptic in these matters and that I found the exposition a little lengthy in places, but the idea is carefully handled and doesn't overwhelm what is a very good story. Whilst we're on the subject of confessions I'll also mention that I was prompted to do some further reading - there's some thought-provoking stuff in there, even for a sceptic.
I loved the young Pandora Fry. Carol Mathews captures perfectly that mixture of the girl and the woman she will become and she has a skill rare among authors in that she can show development without making it obvious. The story cuts nimbly back and forth between the seventies and 2003 - in lesser hands this could have been confusing but Mathews invokes the seventies without too many references to flared trousers or the politics of the time. It's great stuff and I enjoyed it.
I'd like to thank the author for sending a copy of the book to the Bookbag.
If you would like to know more about the seventies then we can recommend In The Seventies: Adventures in the Counterculture by Barry Miles or for another story set in that decade, have a look a Paper Houses by Michele Roberts.
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You can read more about Carolyn Mathews here.
Carolyn Mathews was kind enough to be interviewed by Bookbag.
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