Outside the Ordinary WorldMira (2010), Edition: Original Paperback (ISBN 0778328899 / 9780778328896)
Fiction: 400 pages
Reason for reading: Blog tour/review
Opening Lines: “I’m pacing circles in the family therapist’s waiting room, trying to discern what my daughter is saying on the other side of that door. Hannah hasn’t spoken to me in days, but she seems to have plenty to say to a stranger: I can hear the muffled inflection of her voice, rising and falling with some thick emotion, her footsteps beating the length of the wood floor. I time my gait to match hers - step for step across the narrow, windowless room.”
Book description, via the publisher/TLC: Sylvia Sandon is at a crossroads in her life. A wife and mother of two daughters, she and her city-planner husband are grappling with the escalating renovation of their antique farmhouse—a situation that mirrors the disarray in Sylvia’s life. Facing a failing marriage and a stalled career as an art teacher, Sylvia finds herself suddenly powerless to the allure of Tai Rosen, the father of her most challenging art student. As their passion ignites, Sylvia is forced to examine her past, and the seeds of betrayal that were sown decades earlier by her mother’s secret life.
Eloquently written and deeply thought-provoking, Ostermiller’s OUTSIDE THE ORDINARY WORLD crosses many years and miles—from the California brushfires in the 1970s to New England during the first half of this decade. Raised Seventh Day Adventist, Sylvia must reconcile the conflicting values exhibited by her parents—a mother involved in an extramarital affair and a father who was emotionally distant and abusive—while coming to terms with her own troubling role in her family’s dissolution and father’s tragic death.
Comments: Dori Ostermiller’s debut novel, Outside the Ordinary World, covers a lot of ground. It’s the engrossing history of a complex family, an examination of marriage and its challenges, and a reflection on how women may find themselves becoming their own mothers, despite every effort not to.
Moving back and forth, in alternating chapters, over the 30 years between the mid-1970’s and the present day and from California to Massachusetts, Ostermiller follows the parallels and differences between the disintegration of Sylvia Sandon’s parents’ marriage when she was a child and the current crisis in her own. Despite Sylvia’s determination not to have history repeat itself or to have her mother’s story become her own, a distance has grown between her and her husband Nathan, leaving room for a mutual attraction to develop between her and landscape gardener Tai Rosen. Sylvia’s conflict is further complicated by a rebellious daughter, an endless house renovation, a dying grandmother, and the memories of how her parents’ marriage ended - and the role she believes she played in it.
Marital fidelity and its opposite are the dominant themes of the novel, and they’re considered thought-provokingly and from various perspectives. Infidelity is a complicated topic, and given my own personal experience with it, I appreciated that it was treated as such. It doesn’t tend to happen unless a space has been created in a marriage that allows it to, although sometimes the spouses may not realize the space is there until one partner’s actions force them to face it. It doesn’t automatically mean a marriage is over, either. And it affects more people, in more unpredictable ways, than those directly participating in it. Ostermiller’s given me some food for thought on this, and it may lead to another post on this admittedly uncomfortable topic.
Outside the Ordinary World is vividly written and held my attention fully. While there were scenes that felt a little overdone to me, for the most part the story felt emotionally true, and the characters - particularly Sylvia and her mother Elaine - were well-drawn and developed. This novel is quality women’s fiction, and would give book groups quite a lot to talk about. I may not be done talking about it myself, but since I’m still thinking and sorting out what else I’d like to say - and it’s not likely to be directly about this book itself - I’ll wrap up the review here.
Rating: 3.75/5
Other stops on this TLC Book Tour:Monday, November 1st: Book Club Classics!
Tuesday, November 2nd: Rundpinne
Wednesday, November 3rd: Cozy Little House
Thursday, November 4th: Lit and Life
Monday, November 8th: Peeking Between the Pages
Tuesday, November 9th: I’m Booking It
Monday, November 15th: Musings of a Bookish Kitty
Tuesday, November 16th: Reviews from the Heart
Wednesday, November 17th: Mockingbird Hill Cottage
Thursday, November 18th: Starting Fresh
Friday, November 19th: Diary of an Eccentric
Monday, November 22nd: Along the Way
Wednesday, November 24th: In the Next Room
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