Barnes and Noble Review

Someone told me they'd seen a review on the Barnes & Noble site, and it has taken me a long time to have a look.  This is an excellent summary of the book; wish I had written something this good as my "pitch" to publishers!  Whoever mceyes may be, I'm grateful for this.  

It's been a while since DOM was published, and life has taken various twists and turns since then.  Still, now and then someone will refer to parts of the book, telling me it made them feel less alone or validated their own life choices.  Knowing that is the most gratifying aspect of having written this book.  It doesn't have a limited shelf life,  I believe most readers who stumble on it in the years ahead will be able to relate it to most of it.  And the poems are timeless. 

Great thanks to all who have read Dancing on Mars and shared it.  May you always know the joys of being a reader.

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mceyes
Posted April 14, 2013

Dancing on Mars is one Southern woman¿s "Odyssey."
 

Dancing on Mars is one Southern woman’s "Odyssey." The story begins with a memoir of childhood, and a psychological investigation of her parents, their marriage and family life. As a child she saw the schism between her sensibility and her family’s constricted lives. She began to assume role of adult and was treated as such by her mother. By the time she was 18, she had no idea who she was. She sleepwalked away from college and into marriage. In her marriage she was unable to grow, becoming a servant to her husband and son. The first rumblings of self-awareness appeared when she began writing. After a second marriage to the same man, she escaped and began to fashion a life unique to herself.

Lucinda Shirley is a natural communicator. Her writing brings different levels of thought and information together and presents them in a clear way. There is a sense of connecting with the consciousness of others in her life, or in those cases where relationships end, a lack of that sense of intuitive connection. For someone who cares to understand and link with others, growing up in a home where these connections were guarded and masked was difficult. In her family, independent thinking and emotional expression were not encouraged and often suppressed. A keen observer, Shirley pulls away the mask to show the intricacies of growing up in a Southern family. She is as honest, though, about her own strengths and weaknesses as she is about those of her family. This perceptive ability to honestly evaluate her behavior and its consequences is one key to her finally breaking free.