Reviews for Sister Yessa's story

The average rating for Sister Yessa's story based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-08-15 00:00:00 Michael Azzarello the aristocratic Marit Deym inherits acres of forestland; she creates a wildlife preserve and smuggles in a small pack of wolves to live there. her one friend: urbane lesbian Lola, who is hungry like the wolf for innocent debutantes. her true love: lone wolf Gabriel, teacher of the blind children whose school borders her preserve. Gabriel sparks an all-encompassing passion in Marit, and then a deranged possessiveness, a wolfish hunger to make every part of him hers, and to destroy all rivals, living and dead. I actually did not expect this strange and beautifully written story - winner of the National Book Award for Best First Novel in 1981 - to be a portrait of a descent into madness. I was reminded of the excellent Endless Love's equally stark portrait of extremes of emotion. Marit is a rich eccentric but I somehow understood her, perhaps didn't completely relate to her but she was in many ways sympathetic: awkward, independent, and often covering her shyness with a blunt dismissiveness. so, understanding Marit, it was shocking to realize that just a few pages earlier I was watching her address a town hall meeting in her stumbling way and then now here she was at a grave site, on her knees in violent hysterics, scrabbling in the ground and covering her face with graveyard dirt. Marit certainly doesn't do things by half-measures, including falling in love, including going crazy. and including protecting the animals in her keeping. poor Marit! it looks like this very talented author only wrote three books. I wonder why that it is. her prose impresses, the narrative she constructs is hypnotic, and she has that uncommon ability to write lyrically but not in an obvious way. her dialogue is sharp and often realistic, except during one standout scene where the lovers confront one another in language that is weirdly, fascinatingly stilted, as if they were channeling all such lovers learning that love does not make things perfect. her skill with characterization is fantastic! Marit and Gabriel are incredibly insular, often unlikable people and Arensberg makes us know them fully, if not like them. but the best part of the book is stylish, wolfish Lola, a loyal and supportive best friend, a heartless heartbreaker, a cynical society girl, and the sole voice of reason in this increasingly dark and unbalanced story. it's hard not to read this book as if seeing the players and their drama through Lola's unsentimental eyes, and it's hard not to want to keep reading more about this delightful character.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-11-08 00:00:00 Denzel Robinson Now and then you come across a writer with a talent that is so unique, and so idiosyncranatic that they can ignore most of the "rules" that apply to a good work of fiction and still turn out a work that is worth reading. Sister Wolf is that kind of book, and Ann Arensberg is that kind of author. It's a short novel, full of contradictions and shifts of mood and pace, but still manages to have a coherent narrative, and a consistent compelling voice. It's the story of Merit Deym, an heiress of Hungarian aristocracy who lives on a thousand miles of Berkshire Hills wilderness. Bright and attractive, but uncomfortable around most people Merit feels most at ease with the wild animals, bears and wolves included, that she allows to live on her unofficial preserve. She has one real friend, Lola Brevard, a breezy socialite who juggles her open social calendar with a secret life as a lesbian with a taste for coltish tomboys. There is also one man in her life, Gabriel Frankman, hot-tempered as a youth who has since wrapped himself in a blanket of asceticism and become a teacher of blind children at an exclusive academy not far from the Deym estate. It would not be too far off of the mark to say that the rest of the story is just watching these three characters interact for a month or so, until a series of misunderstandings escalate into tragedy. It would also be a bit simplistic. What Ms. Arensberg does that is so original that I alluded to in the first paragraph is that the majority of the narrative in this book could be called back-story. She shows and tells us these, and several other well-drawn minor characters, stories until the present day, and then with about twenty percent of the book left, the rest of the tale unfolds. Admittedly the stuff that does happen is amongst the most sensational in a novel filled with byzantine twists and strange, complex individuals. The reason that this works in this case is that Ms. Arensberg is a writer that knows how to make prose sing, so that while basically filling us in on the past lives of these people it is never less than fascinating. The only thing that keeps me from labeling this a five-star book is that most of the characters in this book are particularly difficult to like or empathize with, and while that is not a prerequisite, it certainly does help the medicine go down a bit smoother. The only one I felt and degree of sympathy with, until near the end, was Lola, who was a ray of sunshine amidst a group of gloomy Guses caught up in the middle of a Gothic nightmare. Yet for the majority of this book I was held in thrall, and that says quite a bit for the talent of Ms. Arensberg, and quite a bit for this special novel. Review by: Mark Palm