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Round Table Reviews
Reviewed By Wendall Sexton
Fascinating. My first reaction reading the initial pages opening Joy Lee Rutter’s A FLAMBOYANT DISARRAY OF DREAMS was, as Mr. Spock might proclaim -- fascinating. A woman sits catatonic in her driveway, pondering death by the hand of Bart Simpson, while reflecting on her work, her life, and whether or not the patients she helps at Rivers Edge, a New Hampshire neuro-rehabilitation facility, are actually being “helped” by her efforts. Will their lost cognitive skills, necessary for assimilating information and controlling behavior, once more be of use; or are those patients, and their frenetic, dangerous childlike behaviors, dragging her down into the same disarray that fills their days? Such is the question before Joleen Cumberland.
Mitch Stevens is a writer; or, perhaps more appropriately stated, he was a writer. Following a tumble from the second story deck of his condominium, he now is little more than a vegetable, unable to speak, and barely able to move. His eyes, as Joleen notices, are alert, watching herself, as well as Rebecca, Mitch’s wife, when she visits him at Rivers Edge; but his ability to communicate is lost.
Mitch becomes the roommate of Alex Williams, a young man incapable of controlling his emotions, raging into temper tantrums, dangerous and frightening to those people not prepared to deal with the hazards he presents. Somehow, with Joleen as the conduit back into the real world, Mitch and Alex foster a nebulous father/son relationship: Mitch helping Alex speak of what bolts him into such ballistic anger; and Alex giving Mitch a reason to do more than just sit in his wheelchair and take up space.
I was drawn to this book initially from its title. It caught my attention, and I found myself wanting to know more of what this curious arrangement of words meant. When I learned the premise of the book took place in a ‘neuro-rehabilitation’ facility – a place of which I was completely unfamiliar – I knew there was something within its 281 pages worth investigating. Happily, I can report my time was spent well.
Why do I say this? Simple: A FLAMBOYANT DISARRAY OF DREAMS resonates within the context of the Rivers Edge patients, as well as the staff from whom they depend for care.
You see, Joy Lee Rutter has accomplished something with this book all authors should. She has taken the book’s title, which overtly pertains to the disarray of those people robbed of their faculties, and applied it to the struggles all people encounter in their lives. Joleen, as the protagonist of this engaging tale, continues returning to Rivers Edge (though she seeks the life of a successful writer) while inwardly desiring to quit, leave it all behind, and forget all the wandering quandaries about why she has remained there seven years. There is also Melanie, her supervisor, struggling, to a degree with boyfriend issues – in a fashion one never envisions a supervisor talking to an employee whom she supervises. Tim, the new RS on staff, is the scruffy ex-husband, thrown out of his house, driving his John Deere lawnmower to work. Brad, Joleen’s nemesis, who while doing all he can to do his job right, manages to insolently do everything wrong – they trade some amazingly witty barbs that shows Joleen’s wrong side is a fool’s land to tread.
If you are looking for a good tale, A FLAMBOYANT DISARRAY OF DREAMS is one worth a try. There are good characters that develop naturally through the action and transpire logically from one plot point to the next. There is a solid ending with which one will not be disappointed; and which, I believe could establish, a second book with these same characters (if Geoff and Rebecca are strengthened) as the issues raised at the conclusion here illicit more concern than just a person’s brain no longer functioning as it ought.
A FLAMBOYANT DISARRY OF DREAMS is Joy Lee Rutter’s second book -- her first, being A DISTURBING PRESENCE. I hope she continues to develop her stories with the sense of strong plot and concurrent theme, which relates not only to the characters she creates, but also those readers taking the time to indulge in her words. It is much the same as the characters here in A FLAMBOYANT DISARRAY OF DREAMS. They were reading the lives of those characters within Rivers Edge, learning, as Mitch would tell in his writings, one should always look beyond the words -- a truth still pertinent to all living upon planet earth today.
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