105. The Light of Luna Park

The Light of Luna Park. Addison Armstrong. 2021 [August] 336 pages. [Source: Library]

First sentence: No baby is happy about being pushed into this world. But never have I seen one so entirely unprepared for its entrance. Three months premature, the infant before me contorts her shiny face to scream. Her tiny lungs convulse with the effort, and the skin on her chest stretches and snaps back to make room. Her matchstick legs kick; her coin-sized hands twitch. The girl’s mother wails, and I fear her deep, gurgling gasps may snatch away the oxygen so craved by her infant. I fix my eyes on the newborn as if I can send her what she needs. Keep breathing, I will the baby girl. Her torso is the size of two fists, the size of two beating hearts. Though we both know it, the doctor is the one to say the truth aloud.

Premise/plot: The Light of Luna Park is historical fiction with two narrators and two time periods. One narrator is Althea Anderson is a nurse (well, almost fully trained and on the verge of graduation) in 1926. The other narrator is Stella Wright a special education teacher in 1950/51. Both stories relate back to a Coney Island exhibit and a doctor determined to save premature babies.

My thoughts: I recently read Boardwalk Babies by Marissa Moss. I found this picture book biography to be fascinating. I read it several times before returning it to the library--and I pushed it on my mother too. (That's a good test of a book, really, do I *force* my mom to read it???) The Light of Luna Park is about the same subject--premature babies and a doctor along with a team of nurses determined to save them with incubators and special feeding spoons. I wanted to love, love, love the novel. I did. But I didn't quite.

I think my main problem with the novel--what kept it an "almost" for me--was the way it was narrated. Because it has TWO time periods and TWO main protagonists, it's hard for suspense to build. And that's the thing, the readers know from almost page one everything that is going to happen. There are absolutely no surprises, no twists and turns. Stella's story depends on mystery and suspense. Literally almost all of her sections are about her desperately searching, seeking, sleuthing, hunting, tracking, etc. There's no suspense for readers to share in because readers know everything. Likewise, Althea's story fizzles out because readers know ultimately where it's heading because of where Stella starts out.

The book wasn't without interesting stories. I would have LOVED to focus on Stella's PRESENT life. Her deep, deep frustrations WORKING for a principal with no principles! Her work as a special education teacher could have been absorbing/fascinating. It could have shed some light on a probably not-so-nice time in American history. We could have been shown how awesome Stella is to fight, fight, keep fighting, keep pushing back, keep striving to serve those students. Instead we get a very lukewarm, not very exciting, boring mystery that she leaves EVERYTHING to solve. Another angle that might have been explored is her relationship with her husband, Jack, and his PTSD after the war. Instead of this truly being central and a way to explore mental health--again during a time in American history when it wasn't always the best--this is more an excuse to have ongoing miscommunication between spouses. I just don't think there was much DEPTH and SUBSTANCE given to the characters in particular how they relate to one another.

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For example, we know from Stella's story that Althea must marry for convenience at some point and that there is a man who raises Stella as his own. We also know that BOTH of Stella's parents have died. So when Althea's "romantic" story line begins, it doesn't really have an emotional impact because we know that ultimately it doesn't go anywhere.

Since I've already typed the spoiler alert, I can go ahead and mention how utterly silly it is for Althea to seek out "the one that got away" after her husband died so they can have a ONE NIGHT STAND?????? So Althea can oh-so-conveniently confess her deepest darkest secret (that readers have known about since chapter one essentially), so that the doctor can then SHARE with Stella VIA a letter THEIR PRIVATE INTIMACIES and confessions. EWW!!!! "I can confirm that her body had never delivered a baby!"

 

© 2021 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews