Most of us have to eventually settle when it comes to accepting what fate has dealt us as opposed to what we expected or wanted. This is a common theme in Anjuelle Floyd's work.

 
4.0 out of 5 stars Pandora's Box of Secrets, October 22, 2010
By W. Joyce White - See all my reviews

This review is from: Keeper of Secrets: Translations of an Incident (Paperback)
Keepers of Secrets
Translations of an Incident
by Anjuelle Floyd

My Title for Review
Pandora's Box of Secrets
[...]


Anjuelle is a gifted story-teller and lives in San Francisco Bay Area and has been married for 25 years. She is a mother, wife and radio host. She is great at details and her moment- to-moment details are exceptional. In the first two stories she weaved a very complicated set of characters and circumstances around an incident with an estranged couple arguing at a fancy restaurant. The on-lookers who are also having dinner become the characters in her stories collectively. The root argument that stirred each was between a wife and husband as they were having dinner. Evidently, the wife had aborted her baby and the husband was very angry. What I found odd was that it was the wife who jumped up and held a knife to her husband's throat. She also had a gun in her purse. Her intent was premeditated but questionable to me. I would like to have this thought expanded on. Raven, the heroine, threw herself into the mix by talking the woman into submission, saving the husband's life. The husband was enraged at his wife aborting his child without his knowledge. It is these little non-expanded on details that left me hanging with more questions than answers. I don't think the scene was substantial enough. I think all these stories would have made one great mystery. My comments are not criticism, just my own personal feelings.

I think it interesting the first title, Dancing Siva, was named after a mahogany deity or god set within a ring of fire. Anjuelle actually sculpted this artwork she based her story on. I thought this a unique fact. I liked the idea this story was wrapped around a real piece of art work. As the scene opens in the restaurant, Raven, her heroine, was already emotionally drained from a crying baby she just couldn't bond with as a mother. I think she was probably suffering from depression after giving birth. The story could have expanded this thought more. She was a psychotherapist trying to raise her second child with the guilt of aborting her first unbeknown to the father or to her new husband Drew. I think the term, Physician, heal thyself, is appropriate. Anjuelle's characters were all pretty much like herself, African Americans, well-educated, students of Theology and Philosophy. All are care-takers bent on living the American dream and living in accordance to their own cultures, rituals and set of values.

There was a mild sort of emotional menage a trios going on between Raven, her religious mentor Absylom and her lawyer-husband Drew. Anjuelle is great at writing womanly love and romance. Her lyrical words left me spellbound, "Sometimes our hearts are divided. Yet to love one person more fully, we sometimes have to leave the other. It's the only way we can stay whole - - otherwise we bleed to death," A practical non-poetic way to look at this is - - if you can't be with the one you love, to love the one you're with! Raven ultimately had two choices for self-preservation and happiness; she had to pick which child to best love by freeing herself of guilt for aborting her first so she could properly parent and love the second. The other choice she had to make was how to love her husband without forgetting the love she had for Absylom, her religious leader and mentor.

In her next story Keeping Secrets, psychoanalyst, Lahni reminds me of Raven. However, Lahni married a blind Nigerian financier instead of again... This seemed kind of strange to me since Lahni was herself attacked when she was a young girl by three Nigerian women bent on circumcising her. Lahni married another Nigerian who may want one day to take her and her daughter back to Nigeria. Her daughter could face the same mutilation. I think this story could be turned into a great mystery. I thought it odd that Lahni didn't want to talk to her Nigerian husband about female circumcision and her ongoing nightmares. What was she afraid of?

Again, like in the first story, there was an emotional ménage a trios going on with Lahni, a childhood friend Amos and her blind Nigerian husband. When it comes to loving two, Anjuelle so lyrically wrote, "...a person's hidden truths, however treacherous or sad, defined them, served as the glue holding all intact, but also bound that person to those entrusted with holding their confidence, keeping their secrets." Sometimes we have to stay emotionally tied to those who accept us as we are with secrets or not."

These stories were not easy reading for me. I agree with Clive Matson, who wrote the blurb on the back jacket of Keeper of Secrets, "Karmic truth, the effect of our decisions with our secrets and our deepest loves, comes back and squeezes the hearts of these characters..." Reading it kind of squeezed my heart and my head. Most of us have to eventually settle when it comes to accepting what fate has dealt us as opposed to what we expected or wanted. I would highly recommend this book and her new one entitled, The House. "The House" was named #41 in Cyrus Webb and Conversations Reveal The "Top 100 Books of 2010. Congrats to Anjuelle Floyd.