Review of "Permanence" [56]

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Permanence by Vincent Zandri

Bear Media; May 4, 2012

143 pages

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The narrator of our book is a woman name Mary...a fact we do not find out until well into the story..…who is going every Friday to see a psychiatrist. She is seeing him to help her deal with the accidental drowning of her child, a two year old son named Sammy. A name that we do not find out until almost the end of the book. Since the child’s death several months ago Mary has lost almost everything in her life. Her only child is dead, her husband left her and she was fired from her travel agent job.

Now she just sits in her apartment, living off the life insurance, going out only to get food and to see Doctor, as she calls her psychiatrist, every Friday. Because not only is he her doctor, he is her lover.
Ok, creepy enough for you yet?
Oh, don’t worry, it will get even more interesting, in a grim way. Doctor tells her that he will be gone for several weeks, at a series of conferences in Italy. She is upset, not sure if she can make it through without the time they spend together. And then rather surprisingly, he invites her to come along, to Venice, Florence and Rome, with him. Of course, things are a little complicated when we find out that Mary is afraid of flying. In fact, even though she was a travel agent, she has never flown. But then Mary is afraid of many things…flying, elevators, dealing with a baby…the voices. Yes, voices. Mary is a very troubled young woman, perhaps way more than we first realized.

I am not quite sure how you would characterize this book. I read someone who said it was like watching a car wreck. You want to turn away. You know it is going to be bad, you know it is going to be ugly, and yet you can’t avert your eyes. I doubt most readers will be totally surprised where this book goes, what happens, what we find out, but the journey there is gripping. The imagery is memorable, if not always pleasant. I must say that those rats, running over the rocks along Florence’s Arno River, made an impression on me, if not a good impression. Water is a theme that appear again and again, the water that drowned her child, the rain, the rivers, the canals of Venice, let there is somehow nothing cleaning about this water.

…a perfect backdrop for this tale of death and madness.

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My thanks to the The Partners in Crime Tour and the author for providing a copy for review.
Drop in to their site and check out a few more reviews on the tour!

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