Buy This Book: UNDERWATER by Elizabeth Diamond

What happens when you lose someone precious in your childhood? And you don’t know what happened to them? Someone like a sibling, say, who was your center, the calm eye of the storm of hard feelings, fear and misery that was your family? And there’s no closure, only half-truths and secrets, the tricks of your memory. You live with this absence. Live over it. Do the best you can. In UNDERWATER, Elizabeth Diamond's second novel, Jane does this. She lives over the loss of her brother. Makes a life, marries, has a child. And with all of this she has in effect “fixed” the past. But the sore mystery of her brother’s whereabouts never leaves her; the wound his absence has left in her heart never heals. Still, Jane might have managed keeping all of what happened inside and all of herself together, if not for the accident that befalls her own child, the accident that renders her son, whom she adores, less than perfect. Now, like falling dominoes, her life comes apart.

The darker themes of this story are sometimes overwhelming, but as a character, Jane is exceptionally well drawn and the emotional tenor of the drama, while it is a lot of drama, rings true. As in Elizabeth Diamond’s first novel, An Accidental Light, what compels the reader is the beauty of the writing, the ever-so-delicate unfoldment of Jane’s private heart and her private pain through her relationships with her husband and son and with her mother who didn’t ever favor Jane, but doted on the brother.

UNDERWATER is an unflinching examination of the nature of our disappointment in ourselves in circumstances where we wish, even pray, to be better human beings and yet continue to fail. It is inevitable that Jane will finally be forced to search for her lost brother. It is only in finding him that she will have the answer and possible healing and closure. Does he remember the way she does? The terrible truth that has sat burning like a hot coal at the center of her being her entire life? She knows what it has cost her--nearly everything. But what has it cost him?

Buy This Book: An Accidental Light

AN ACCIDENTAL LIGHT, Elizabeth Diamond’s riveting debut novel begins: A life can change in an instant. That’s all it takes. She gives us that much certainty. What is uncertain, what plays tricks is the light--road light--especially at evening. Anyone who drives at that hour can be fooled for an instant, can misjudge the shape, the potential for hazard. Jack Philips is driving home in such vague light when his instant comes; he isn’t sure of what he sees when Laura Jenkins, a thirteen-year-old girl, emerges quickly, ghost-like, from the blue-misted shadow of a parked bus into the street, not until he stops after his car strikes her. Kneeling beside her, he keeps his eyes on her face; her fingers are cold in his. The gleam of light in her eyes suggests the soul is yet uncertain of where it should be. Her mother, Lisa, is at work dealing with a customer when the accident happens, when her daughter lies dying in the rain, in the street. In a stranger’s grasp. Lisa Jenkins will think later how unreal it is to be at work and oblivious in the very same instant that your ordinary life and your child are leaving you. These people and this tragedy that leaves them stunned and gasping, that rips up their lives is posed in such real and heartrending terms. And even when Laura reappears to both Jack and Lisa, it seems natural; it shares a sensibility with Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones.

Elizabeth Diamond has drawn the characters in this novel, Lisa and Jack and their spouses, the girl, Laura, with such precision and care, and such honesty, they seem familiar, more like truth than fiction. And while the story’s plot spins off this terrible calamity, the story itself is one of forgiveness, of redemption and found courage. The surprise is the suspense and the bit of magical realism. Both elements are so deftly woven through the pages you are scarcely aware of them, yet you’re caught up, and it becomes truly riveting when Jack and Lisa’s paths cross in the most astonishing twist, but again, the narrative is unfolded with such skill, you don’t question the reality. I wasn’t in the least surprised to learn Elizabeth Diamond is also a poet. She has a gift with language. In fact, AN ACCIDENTAL LIGHT has everything a good book should have: an absorbing storyline and deeply-layered characters, all wrapped up in a flow of beautiful writing. It’s just a great read.