Under the guise of mentor and muse, a frustrated writer and her ambitious teenage protégé take an illicit summer road trip fraught with racial and sexual tension. This is a compelling psychological novel about social norms, artistic ambition, and obsession.Maggie Barnett works in the media center of a school in Flint, Michigan where she meets Taezha Riverton, an aspiring teenage writer. After … writer. After discovering that Maggie is also a writer, Taezha turns to her as both mentor and friend.
Alone and childless, it’s not enough for Maggie to take Tae to restaurants and poetry slams. Although Tae’s mother has nothing against Maggie, she is less than thrilled when Maggie proposes to take her daughter on a summer road trip. Permission is never explicitly granted, but shortly after school is out for the summer, Maggie and Tae head for the Southeast.
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What’s behind the door?
What’s behind this intriguing story?! I loved the cover from the moment I saw it. But after reading the book, it is my belief the cover is as symbolic as the narrative pointing to something much deeper than a pretty cover.
This book has an easy-to-read style, plenty of dialogue and drama to keep you turning pages as the story moves along without sagging. It tackles social, racial, sexual and psychological issues with plenty of sketchy behavior that would have anybody doubting their sanity.
It is said, those who cannot do teach, and a muse is the source of inspiration. Young, talented, envied, and well-loved by friends, Taehza is everything Maggie isn’t. Mistaking obsession for mentoring, Maggie, the school librarian, tries to live vicariously through Taehza’s youth and creativity. At first Taehza is delighted and flattered with all the attention paid to her by her teacher, but the situation turns drastic when Maggie takes Tae on a trip without her parent’s consent and they spend every minute together over the road. Conflict abounds in this story not only between these deeply flawed characters, but within themselves. Will their relationship take a desperate turn or do they come out on top? You’ll need to read this psychological fiction story for yourself to find out.
4 Stars
A Mentor and Her Muse intrigued me from the moment I saw the cover. I was going to read it no matter what, but the blurb certainly sealed the deal for me. Colour me intrigued! This is my first read from Susan Sage, so I really had no idea of what to expect from her. Having finished the story, I am happy to report that I will be stalking, scratch that, I mean ‘following’ Ms. Sage’s work now, and into the future.
This story has a lot going on in it- but Susan Sage choreograph the whole thing superbly. From the complex characters, to the complicated situations, emotive elements, the ‘psychological’ character study, the thought provoking nature of the relationship… and storyline, to the philosophical undertone to the story- as well as all the other clever and creative elements Ms. Sage has textured her story with- made for quite an engrossing and memorable read.
There were times I felt very unsettled by what I was reading- feeling like the mentor/mentee relationship was blurring lines which should not be crossed. But I think that is/was Ms. Sage’s intent the whole way through. She certainly had me paying attention, and gave me plenty to think about.
We certainly get a front row seat to all the highs and lows, and other developments as they happen. I felt like a passenger, along for the trip.
The character development, growth, and/or unravelling, was so well done. These individuals were crafted into ‘being’- with their own unique personalities, quirks, and flaws. Ms. Sage gives us vastly different perspectives to follow, and keeps each one on point- not an easy task shifting from the mindset of a 53 year old woman- to that of a teenage girl. So, amongst other things, I am really impressed with her character development skills.
The story has quite and artistic/poetic feel to it- which really suited the characters and storyline. Now I am really looking forward to seeing what Ms. Sage does next!
Thank you, Ms. Sage!
‘I wouldn’t classify what I did as a crime, rather as a sort of vigilante justice’, proclaims the intriguing opening line of A Mentor and Her Muse. Thus are we introduced to the moral and emotional uncertainties that haunt schoolteacher Maggie, the story’s central protagonist. They also haunt the novel itself, for good and ill.
Taezha (Tae) and Maggie both live in Flint, Michigan, a town whose fortunes declined precipitously when the auto industry shut up shop without a backward glance or moral scruple. Maggie is a white schoolteacher and prolific serial monogamist; Tae is a talented and beautiful black schoolgirl. Maggie has some money and freedom; Tae has little of either. Maggie’s parents killed themselves, and she herself once attempted suicide and is something of a kleptomaniac. Tae’s family circumstances are difficult and stressful; her mother, Quintana, is fickle and conflicted.
Maggie and Tae first meet when Tae is twelve, and Maggie is immediately smitten in ambiguous ways that are supposed gradually to untangle as the story unfolds. Tae is almost fifteen when Maggie takes her on a road trip, more or less with Quintana’s permission. This trip forms the spine of the story. ‘Tae is not Maggie’s Lolita!’ exclaims the authorial voice at one point, although Humbert Humbert’s travels with his underage victim have long since been evoked. Maggie cloaks her need to be with Tae in concealing clichés: ‘We both realized, without telling ourselves or each other at the time, that we needed each other as central players in our lives.’
Structurally, the novel alternates interestingly between third person and first, between Maggie’s journal entries (dating back decades to race riots in Detroit and tensions with her conservative parents) and Tae’s adolescent poems, with frequent changes of tense and perspective.
However, there is also a lot wrong with A Mentor and Her Muse, and its many problems are mutually reinforcing.
All authors have their little writerly tics and subconscious habits. The practice of writing necessarily includes constant effort to bring these habits to creative awareness. Only then can we place them under our command. Susan Sage has a lot of them, in my view, and they need to be disciplined. Together, they add up to a confusing and disappointing experience.
To begin with, the text could do with careful proofreading: there are more than enough errors to irritate the most patient reader. Missing words and garbled sentences abound; at one point, ‘eluded’ is used when ‘alluded’ is meant; a gazebo is severed into ‘two halves’.
Explanatory clauses and qualifying statements in parentheses (like this) run amuck, page after page. Throughout, swarms of self-referential questions infest passages of free indirect discourse, concluding paragraphs or else nesting in their midst. This overuse of an otherwise effective rhetorical device becomes wearing and predictable, so that it ceases to function. Eventually, about half-way through the book, they become merely amusing, as we wait for their inevitable arrival.
Themes of race and age, love and creativity struggle in vain for precise articulation throughout A Mentor and Her Muse. ‘What is this white woman up to?’ asks Tae of Maggie, but the question is hopelessly underdetermined. Maggie is, I think, meant to be taken seriously, but she is irritatingly naïve: ‘So I, too, have known something of racism and discovered what a hell on earth it truly is!’ For a middle-aged white woman like Maggie – no matter how observant, sensitive and ‘concerned’ – to make such a claim is frankly derisory, particularly as it is uttered after a marginally uncomfortable experience at a school committee meeting. Hell indeed.
A Mentor and Her Muse would benefit from a lot more dialogue. Assertions of states of affairs become dull and repetitive when they are used to the exclusion of so much else, depriving us of artistry and nuance. These assertions are hurled at the reader, many of them out of nowhere, and we have to take them on trust.
‘As much as Tyler wishes he could spend more time with Tae, it’s been amazing getting to know Maggie.’ There is precious little evidence for this amazement: if only Tyler had been allowed to say this for himself, so that we could see his feelings grow; if only we could know that his heart beat quicker and his eyes shone. But we don’t. Similarly with ‘More than once he’s thought about putting the place up for sale, much as he hated to even think of it.’ If he’d only expressed these doubts to someone, so we could see them evolve, then they would become real. But they’re not.
Maggie’s sister Caroline arrives for reasons best known to herself, at which point there is potential for conflict and dramatic interaction. Instead, we are provided with more dull exposition.
We don’t get to know any of these characters because they seldom reveal themselves in any other way. Thus, Sulie, a relatively marginal character, is a mix of personality traits and motivations that make her ridiculously unbelievable and incoherent. Maggie and Tae’s compulsion to write seems like empty and self-important posturing.
Every bit of information this stylistic approach conveys is given the same emotional weight. It fails to provide a path through the narrative: everything becomes equally unimportant, with no highs or lows, and the reader ceases to care. That’s a great shame.