Open Me

Sunshine O’Donnell
Macadam Cage
223 pages

It’s no surprise that Sunshine O’Donnell is a poet. Open Me, her debut novel, reads like poetry, feverishly beautiful and achingly sad. The book follows the formative years of Mem, a slight, black-haired girl, born into a family of Wailers, or professional mourners, in Pennsylvania, where such work is illegal. Mem’s mother and aunt trace their heritage back to ancient Rome, retaining a stash of sacred salt from the Via Salaria, the old salt route from the Tiber. And it is this history that propels Mem into stardom as a legendary weeper and prevents her from fully experiencing life.

We follow sweet, little Mem’s maturation from a six-year-old child, whose love for her mother encompasses her whole being, to an 11-year-old girl, who hungers for unconditional love, and finally a 17-year-old woman, who thinks no one will ever mourn her. Mem remains a pale, waifish thing throughout the story, as if she is so connected to death that she is barely alive. Her mother, Celeste, however, is the picture of health: a voluptuous woman with bouncing curls that glisten. Determined to make her daughter a star, Celeste verbally abuses Mem, taking advantage of the child’s vulnerability. Apparently, this abuse is common among Wailing families, but what truly allows Mem to perform authentically at every funeral is not so much her low opinion of herself as the idea of being without her mother.

Professional mourners are a secretive bunch, cult-like in their devotion to carrying the torch of their ancestors and remaining professionals. In fact, they refer to everyone else, including the people for whom they mourn, as “unprofessionals,” keeping their real names private while using pseudonyms in public. O’Donnell admits that her research into the real lives of Wailers through the ages revealed very little, so she created her own artifacts.

Each chapter of prose is followed by a faux historical document. From letters to poems, from essay excerpts to Senate bills, these documents span millennia and continents. O’Donnell deftly switches from luminous prose and heartrending poetry to scholarly writing and straightforward journalism. The poems are particularly impressive, each using a solidly separate voice reminiscent of a different era and culture. Of these pieces, the ancient poems, some in fragments, are the most delightful. Consider these lines from a courtesan of the T’ang Dynasty: “Day / and night / she brushes the / strings of her / sorrow / and will not put / a plum / in her mouth.”      

O’Donnell’s prose contains a similar sparkle, clean and smooth as a quiet stream, with images that linger long after the book is closed. Of Mem’s mother, O’Donnell writes, “As she walked to gravesites, swinging the bones of herself into spaces that did not belong to her, invisible moist bells opened and unfurled in her wake, making the mourners suddenly catch their breaths.” O’Donnell is guilty of focusing too much on delicious metaphors and not quite enough on plot, causing the pace to drag at points. Nevertheless, Open Me is intriguing, Mem’s pain so raw and riveting that the reader can almost feel the shape of her tears.