Time's Mouth

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Title: Time's Mouth

Author: Edan Lepucki

Publisher: Counterpoint

Release Date: 8.1.23

Publisher’s Summary 

From New York Times bestselling author Edan Lepucki comes an enthralling saga about family secrets that grow more powerful with time, set against the magical, dangerous landscape of California

Ursa possesses a very special gift. She can travel through memory and revisit her past. After she flees her hometown for the counterculture glory of 1950’s California, the intoxicating potential of her unique ability eventually draws a group of women into her orbit and into a ramshackle Victorian mansion in the woods outside Santa Cruz. Yet Ursa’s powers come with a cost. Soon this cultish community of sisterhood takes an ominous turn, prompting her son, Ray, and his pregnant lover, Cherry, to flee their home for Los Angeles and reinvent themselves far from Ursa’s insidious influence. But escaping their past won’t be so easy. A series of mysterious events forces Cherry to abandon their baby, leaving Ray to raise Opal alone.

Now a teenager and still heartbroken over the abandonment of the mother she never knew, Opal must journey into her own past to reveal the generations of secrets that gave rise to the shimmering source of her family's painful legacy.

From the forests of Santa Cruz, to the 1980s glam of Melrose Avenue to a solitary mansion among the oil derricks off La Cienega Boulevard, and brimming with the double-edged capacity of memory to both heal and harm, Time’s Mouth is a poignant and evocative excavation of the bonds that bind families together.

My Review

This book covers the complex and detailed generational trauma of Sharon/Ursa, her son Ray, his daughter Opal, and multiple people pulled into their orbit. The luscious, atmospheric magical realism had me constantly thinking about the Practical Magic book series (NOT to be confused with the movie.) Hopping between Sharon/Ursa fleeing her hometown in the '50s, Ray figuring out college and living in the city in the '80s, and Opal navigating high school in LA in the late '90s, readers are given lots of cultural references--making them feel a bit like a time traveler themselves. This novel is not a traditional "3-point" novel but more like a "20-point" novel. There are emotional rollercoasters for every character and somehow each one was absolutely perfect. At 400+ pages, this is not a book to be rushed. You'll want to read this if you have time to truly savor each page and storyline.  

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