Is Life Sentences a mystery novel, or is it a study of the level of responsibility writers have for the content of their works? This 2009 standalone novel from Laura Lippman, creator of the Tess Monaghan mystery series, can be read both ways, a fact that results in differing assessments of its effectiveness.
Summary of Life Sentences
Cassandra Fallows, a writer who has won wide acclaim for her two memoirs, has had less success with her one attempt at fiction. Dissatisfied, she decides to return to nonfiction and selects the story of a former Baltimore schoolmate, Calliope Jenkins, as her new subject. Calliope spent seven years in prison for her refusal to comment on the disappearance and presumed death of her infant son.
Cassandra returns to Baltimore to investigate the mystery surrounding Calliope. She interviews three of her own childhood friends who also knew Calliope - Donna, Tisha, and Fatima. Rather than assist her investigation, these friends astonish Cassandra by questioning the version of their past relationship that she had presented in her first memoir.
Life Sentences' Success as a Mystery Novel
Fans of Lippman's mystery novels will find Life Sentences surprisingly unsatisfying. Although discovering the truth behind the Calliope Jenkins story provides the reason for Cassandra's return to Baltimore, Lippman delays her development of that plot line until the last third of the novel. Then she concludes it with unusual haste, as if it were merely incidental to her book.
Life Sentences' Success as a Social Responsibility Novel
What distracts Lippman from her ostensible mystery plot is the question with which the novel begins. “Why do you get to write the story?" a woman asks Cassandra at a book signing. She then follows this question with another concerning Cassandra's memoirs, "Did you get permission to write them?" Confused, Cassandra asks, “Permission to write about my own life?” The woman responds, “But it’s not just your life.”
The Importance of the Question
By questioning the responsibility writers have for the content of their work, Lippman has focused on a highly topical issue. In fact, in an April 5, 2009 review of Dave Cullen’s book, Columbine, New York Times book critic Janet Maslin poses the same question in different words when she asks, "Who owns the tragedy of the April 20, 1999, shootings at Columbine High School?”
The Artistry of the Work
Lippman effectively incorporates this theme of the social responsibility of the writer into the development of her novel. She revels Cassandra's initial blind faith in her own truth telling ability in Cassandra's self-assessment, "She was, as her father had decreed, Cassandra, incapable of speaking anything but the truth."
However, Cassandra's confidence in her veracity is constantly challenged. She urges her father to tell the story of his rescue of her stepmother, Annie, during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King. Jr. "It’s your story,” Cassandra says. Her father replies, “It was. Somehow it became yours.” Cassandra's former schoolmate, Tisha, points to an inaccurate portrayal of Tisha's birthday party in Cassandra's first memoir. Questioning both Cassandra's accuracy and her authority, Tisha asks ,“It was my party. What was it doing in your book?"
Cassandra ultimately recognizes her own fallibility after one of the key "facts" included in her first memoir is discredited. "I knew the endings and I shaped my memories to justify them," she realizes.
Final Assessment
Life Sentences succeeds as a social responsibility novel through its presentation of an important issue and through its development of Cassandra as a character who can learn from her experiences. From that perspective, Lippman's treatment of the mystery plot line as inconsequential appears justified. Calliope's story becomes yet another vehicle from which Cassandra learns the truth about the truth.
About Laura Lippman
A former Baltimore Sun reporter, Laura Lippman's award-winning writing career includes a mystery series featuring private investigator Tess Monaghan; four standalone novels, Every Secret Thing (2003), To the Power of Three (2005), What the Dead Know (2007), and Life Sentences (2009); and a short story collection, Hardly Knew Her (2008).
Lippman, Laura. Life Sentences. New York: Morrow, 2009. ISBN: 9780061128899
Carol Thomas - Carol Thomas began her writing career by teaching English Composition at two Kentucky universities. A 25-year detour into academic ...
