Title: Between Here and April
Author: Deborah Copaken Kogan
Finished: June 17, 2008
Pages: 288
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Publish Year: 2008
ISBN: 1565125622
3rd Early Reviewer book.
Between Here and April is the story of a woman, Elizabeth, who suddenly remembers a traumatic childhood experience one night at a play with her husband.
When she was six, Elizabeth’s best friend in first grade, April, didn’t show up to school and never came back. While she either forgot or repressed the memories following the days after when she was told her friend would never return, suddenly Elizabeth feels the need thirty years later to find out what happened to her friend.
I very much enjoyed this story because it’s not often discussed or written about from a fictional standpoint, this act of a mother suffering from postpartum depression feeling the need to kill herself and her children. While now in the 21st century we are well aware of the symptoms, causes, and some treatments, thirty years ago it was unheard of.
While the story leads you through the story of two lives that almost seem to parallel, I couldn’t help but feel nervous of the actions of Elizabeth as she took their journey and saw some of the similar signs in herself that Adele Cassidy faced: inattentive husband and demanding children. Even up to the end I wasn’t sure how it will all play out or if I would be happy with what I was given as a reader.
Kogan does an amazing job at taking the reader on a journey through the lives of two women in different times, trying to figure out who they are and how they can change the course their lives are taking.
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