Remembering Jody

Randy Sue Coburn's wise first novel takes on the twin challenges of love and mental illness. Marsha Rose, a freelance writer spending a summer in Seattle with her artist lover, looks out her window one day and sees a ghost from the past. Down below her in the park is her childhood best friend, whose life has been shattered by schizophrenia. Marsha hasn't seen Jody Lurrey in 10 years, and at first his surprise appearance strikes her as bizarre coincidence. But then he cuts himself badly because his arm "itched deep down inside, in the bone, and this voice told him the itch was poison, and he better use his knife to get it out." When Jody is hospitalized, Marsha finds a collection of her magazine articles among his belongings and realizes Jody has come looking for her.

Already faced with the difficult decision of whether to relocate to Seattle and live with Paul, she must now determine just how involved she wants to be in Jody's future. Coburn relates her story in chapters that alternate between her characters' shared past in a middle-class Jewish community in South Carolina and present-day Seattle. In doing so, she is able to juxtapose Jody as he was with Jody as he is now, while convincingly limning the deep affection that still binds Marsha and Jody. There are no miracle cures in Remembering Jody, but there is an abiding optimism in the realization that Marsha and Jody are both better people for having known one another. --Alix Wilber


Genre: Literary Fiction