A Review – Boundaries, a novel by Elizabeth Nunez

This is a new novel, and a new author for me.  http://aalbc.com/authors/elizabet.htm

Elizabeth Nunez was recommended by Bernice L. McFadden, a favorite author of mine.  

I wanted to say something right away, about this book, and then finish my comments after I read it to the end.  I stayed up all night, last night, reading, and finished the last two pages this morning.

First comments: (This was twelve pages into the book.)  

I just started reading this novel, and I can say I like it.....it's wonderful to know this publisher, Kashic Books, puts out quality Literary Fiction. 

It's fascinating to me, how writers write.  What I mean is, I enjoy seeing how prose is written in such a way as to literally make you feel.  I don't mean the words, themselves, but the WAY in which those words are placed on the pages.  You get an incredible sense of the writer. You feel their pulse, their heartbeat.  At least I can, anyway.  
Elizabeth Nunez is an award winning writer.  She allows her words to flow with ease, an ease that feels like you are in her boat, floating on a vast ocean when it's calm.  You can observe the undercurrents all around, but you find calmness within this turmoil. 

Last comments:  I didn’t think it would be so difficult to address this story, but I found it wasn’t an easy read, contrary to what I first thought.  Never judge a book until you find its conclusions.

The calmness stayed, more or less, even through a boundless energy was put into this storyline.  I couldn’t feel the energy, though, I only knew it was there because the writer told me it was. With the topics of the subjects scattered wide on every page, I fell out of Elizabeth’s boat, and into a sea of churning subject matter.  I don’t like this feeling of being bombarded with characters' internal struggles, and not feel a thing.  I felt as though I was hit over the head with her oar, but felt nothing for these characters.

I wanted to know if this author was fighting for some kind of rights to live in the US.  Was that her soap box of the day? I was given a story line that dipped and swayed, until I became sick of the redundant references to conflicts of cultures, religious faiths; of black verses white, of black verses black; of tolerance verses intolerance;  the skin color references were endless....the old bitterness that causes havoc in our protagonist, Anna, and the people around her, endlessly spins in your head. 
    
     I crawled back into Elizabeth’s boat, even though it was an uphill fight just to keep my hand from closing this book forever.  It was crowded in that boat, and I wanted to know why these subjects were being introduced at odd moments, given as examples from these characters, and interrupting the flow of story. It was as if the author got tired of keeping you in the moment, by hearkening you back to let you know she knows her history books, whether from first hand experience, or from reading...from whence it all came, I didn't know.

The flat line syntax is unnerving.  Omnipotent stretches into utterly boring dialogue.  Descriptions, references, stories, memories, memoir,  and the history of publishing and editing of books was thrown into the mix as well....all wrapping this novel into a bundle of halting lectures by these characters and this author.  I don’t like to be given history in lecture form in a novel.  I kept saying, stop the redundant telling, you said it once, and once is enough; now get to the damn characters and their POV; get into the moment, and on with the story!

  Two hundred and fifty-six pages of a small size book about immigration and differences that make the world go 'round; and around, and around, and around.