October 3, 2011
Though Phillips’s second novel initially seems like a Harlequin romance for intellectuals (albeit one gussied up with necromancy and archeology), the result proves surprisingly moving. Haunted by memories of her brother, Scott (who died in a car accident when she was 12), 37-year-old Santa Fe archeologist Ren Taylor must literally release the ghosts of her past in order to pursue a promising romance with her colleague, Silas. Despite a banal and predictable plot, Phillips (The Well and the Mine) adroitly sidesteps sentiment, enriching Ren’s world with depth and detail. While studying the Mimbres tribes of the Southwest, Ren utilizes her gift of seeing and communicates with ghosts at the sites she excavates to find out where to dig and how the uncovered artifacts were used. Ren’s passion for personalizing her work, attributing artifacts to specific individuals and striving to tell their stories, causes disagreements with Silas, who can’t believe her approach really works. In this and other exchanges, Phillips nicely illustrates the conflict between masculine reason and feminine intuition.
November 15, 2011
After the well-received The Well and the Mine (2009), Phillips' second novel tackles ghosts, both real and metaphorical, on an archaeological dig in New Mexico. Ren's defining characteristic is not that she is a successful archaeologist or that she is the curator of pre-Columbian artifacts at a New Mexico museum. It is that she sees ghosts. Most frequently she sees the ghost of her brother Scott, dead from a car accident when she was a child 25 years ago. She also sees glimpses of people while on digs--people who lived 1,000 years ago and re-inhabit excavation sites, giving her the (professionally advantageous) opportunity to see brief snapshots of life as it was. Now Ren might have found the thing she's been looking for--additional pottery from an ancient Puebloan (popularly called the Anasazi) she calls the Artist, whose extraordinary pottery she found years ago, but no more since. On site is fellow archaeologist Silas Cooper, smart and a little in awe of what he thinks of as Ren's "intuition" about the artifacts they uncover. Little does he know that Ren's artist, Lynay, is appearing on site along with her mother-in-law Non. The two ghosts seem vaguely aware of Ren as she and Silas uncover new sights and burial chambers, uncovering pots Lynay made. The narrative dips into the lives of Lynay and Non, a parrot handler, as Ren "sees" their lives unfold. In the less distant past Ren's happy childhood before Scott died, and the shattered life she lived with her parents, who became kind of living ghosts, seems to cast a dark shadow over the burgeoning romance she has begun with Silas. The secret of all these ghosts, Lynay, Scott and the memories of happier times, make Ren almost unreachable. Unfortunately, these disparate threads vie for prominence, making the relationship between Ren and Silas less important than it needs to be for the end to resonate. This uneven second novel offers fine details and character study, but it occasionally falls prey to overly ambitious plotting.
(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
August 1, 2011
Phillips here follows up her debut novel, The Well and the Mine, winner of the 2008 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Fiction Award. When Ren was 12, her brother died, but she still communes with him in sunlight, shadows, and songs. Her sensitivity to ghosts makes her an especially gifted archaeologist. She's also interested in a colleague, who may be her last chance to move beyond her brother's death. Not really a paranormal and more than a love story, this book should sweetly show us how we're enfolded in the past yet pull to go beyond. Good for book clubs, so the reading group guide is a plus.
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 1, 2011
A grievous childhood loss sharpens archaeologist Ren Taylor's professional sensitivity at the same time it makes her secretive, closing her off from personal relationships. After older brother Scott dies in a car accident when she's 12, Ren sometimes feels his ghostly presence wherever she is. Her consciousness of the spirit world extends to her work when she glimpses centuries-old members of the Mimbre tribe in New Mexico while she's on digs. Having gained prominence for some distinctive pottery discoveries several years earlier, she's invited by colleague Silas Cooper to see similar, newly unearthed finds to help her track down the long-dead Indian artist. When the ghost of the artist begins appearing to her, Ren attempts to piece together the artist's personal story, while Silas, though acknowledging Ren's insights, seeks hard data about the past, and the personal relationship between them deepens. Phillips (The Well and the Mine, 2009) handles Ren's communication with ghosts with enough delicacy to be persuasive, enhances the appeal of archaeology by personalizing its discoveries, and vividly illustrates the need to share oneself with loved ones.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)
Starred review from December 1, 2011
Phillips moves away from the stark realism of her accomplished first novel, The Well and the Mine, to offer a magical work in many senses of the word. Archaeologist Ren Taylor is celebrated for an extraordinary find: three 12th-century bowls made by the Mimbrenos, the Willow People, a Southwest culture long vanished. The bowls bear a distinctive bird pattern that Ren attributes to a single artist, and she is determined to reconstruct the artist's life. That's not as hard as it sounds, because Ren has visions--and in fact has had them since the death of her beloved brother, Scott, who nevertheless still visits her for chats in the moonlight. When she gets a call from Silas Cooper, who's working at a site in southern New Mexico and has found something related to the work of Ren's mysterious artist, Ren rushes to the site. There, the ghosts flood in, giving Ren a picture of what happened to the artist and her people, even as Ren's growing relationship with Silas helps her work out problems closer to home. VERDICT Some readers might have trouble accepting Ren's visions, but those who do accept them will find a lush, glowing, truly enjoyable work. [See Prepub Alert, 8/15/11.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.