Diane D.
Member
It seems these days my main genres of choice are novels, thrillers, and mysteries. When C. Lynn Murphy's The First Noble Truth caught my eye, I somehow anticipated a 'women's novel' about friendship - and while it is that, it's really about self-hurt as a method of gaining control in a chaotic world.
It takes a while for one to realize that this story is actually being told from the viewpoints of two very different women: Japanese rural teacher Machiko, whose compulsion to self-injure reflects deeper traumas in her life, and that of Krista, whose life holds equally somber tones of danger and pain.
The unifying link between their experiences is suffering - and this is narrated in chapters packed with insights and impressions that are not easily solved by conventional processes of healing, recovery, and logic.
With slow precision C. Lynn Murphy deftly tells their stories (or, more accurately, lets the protagonists' lives speak for themselves), building reader interest and involvement with each chapter and allowing circumstances and settings to 'leak' through emotional responses.
I was left 'thinking' deeply about many things as a result of this book and would recommend it not as 'light women's fiction' but as a psychologically wrenching story of friendship and change.
It takes a while for one to realize that this story is actually being told from the viewpoints of two very different women: Japanese rural teacher Machiko, whose compulsion to self-injure reflects deeper traumas in her life, and that of Krista, whose life holds equally somber tones of danger and pain.
The unifying link between their experiences is suffering - and this is narrated in chapters packed with insights and impressions that are not easily solved by conventional processes of healing, recovery, and logic.
With slow precision C. Lynn Murphy deftly tells their stories (or, more accurately, lets the protagonists' lives speak for themselves), building reader interest and involvement with each chapter and allowing circumstances and settings to 'leak' through emotional responses.
I was left 'thinking' deeply about many things as a result of this book and would recommend it not as 'light women's fiction' but as a psychologically wrenching story of friendship and change.