Kalorama Road – Denise Billups

Rating: 4 stars

The short: The story is unconventional in some ways and good for that. I enjoyed it and recommend it as long as you go in with an open mind.

The long: This book is about women and written by a woman, so I believe that there are some things I won’t understand or perceive, but I promise to try my best.

Okay, the review. I have a double standard when it comes to judging a book. If it’s traditionally published, it means that the writer had some advantages, and their work must conform to certain plot structures. An indie book has much more freedom (and less mainstream appeal because it forgoes certain conventions) and less editing. The way I see it, getting angry at an indie book for not being a trad book is like telling someone to cook whatever they feel like and getting angry that they don’t make a restaurant-quality risotto.

I believe that the book needs some more editing and correction of typos, but that isn’t such a big deal here. I was looking for unique ideas and expressions, and given my rating, I was satisfied.

The first of the indie qualities is the change in narrators. There is no explanation on who’s the voice of each chapter. It can be confusing at the beginning, but I picked up very quickly because each of the characters gets fleshed out. The traditional advice is to basically not do this, but I think it comes in handy here. It lets the author express some views that would be quite onerous in dialogue or in other characters’ mind. This isn’t executed perfectly, but it’s good.

Okay, the plot of the book. It starts with Allison and a mysterious night at the titular Kalorama Road that she subsequently forgot. Then it fast-forwards to her a few years later, settled and working at an editor. I find this a bit annoying because it reminds me of Fellini’s 8 1/2, but it kinda works because it’s one of the central themes of the book. Over the course of a book, Allison figures out what happened and resolves an unsolved crime.

The book uses a little bit of magic realism. Almost everything is resolved logically (if not a little bit implausibly), and the seemingly inexplicable coincidences of the beginning are resolved. However, there are supernatural elements, and they serve a specific role.

This leads me to the theme of the book, where I’ll hopefully get all the threads of my review together. The main ones seem to be female sexuality and identity, though the former could be a part of the latter (or the other way around). Male control over female sexuality is the source of the antagonist’s power, and it is resolved when the protagonist gets control over her life, recovering the missing portion of her soul.

To further explore this, we can look at all the female characters in the novel. There’s the protagonist who, as the voice of the author and reader, seems unsure of herself and very self-conscious. It might correspond with her memory loss, but that might all be part of a larger message about being young and suffering from a traumatic experience that reminds the reader of date rape. The next character I want to talk about is Nikki, the sister of Allison. She is a lawyer and seems preoccupied with her job but ends up pregnant. Her character arc revolves around this. There is also Lisa, the dear college friend and former roommate of Allison. Her goals seemed to be work and her passions, until she gave that all up to join her husband on joining in running a restaurant. There are two characters whose personalities are mostly explored in the brief second section of the book, Belle and Penelope, and there’s another reason I group them together, but I’m not going to reveal that for now. Though we don’t get the full picture until later, Belle’s disappearance is at the center of the story, so we have to ask what about her character is different from the other women of the story. She had become corrupted by a betrayal from her parents (not going to expand on this because of spoilers) and spends her time engaging in something sordid. Her association with this is what may have caused her problems. Penelope is a demure friend of Belle and the one who primarily begins Allison’s path to recovery.

In the last section of my review, I will be giving out some spoilers. Caveat emptor! Stay away if you don’t want to have some plot points revealed.

So, what is the message of this book? In the two days since I finished the book, that’s what I’ve been asking. It would be easy to say that the author has a conservative stance on women, that they need to act in a traditional manner. Allison talks about her virginity after her episode at Kalorama Road, her refusal of relationships, Nikki deciding not to get an abortion, the seeming punishment of Belle for being more comfortable with having sex or engaging in a relationship with an older man, and Lisa’s happiness when she leaves her life behind for a man. However, I believe that isn’t the point and only a superficial treatment of the book. There’s a lot of detail given to how Allison dresses and Nikki’s refusal of an abortion. Kalorama Road isn’t about highlighting the ‘correct’ way women should act. It’s about women having control over their lives. Allison comes to peace when she’s no longer under the thumb of powerful men, Nikki makes her decisions because of what she wants and not what her boyfriend wants (though they are the same thing), Lisa is sure in her choices and is deliberate in opening a restaurant with her husband (though I will caution the fictional character that while enjoying cooking is lovely, running a restaurant is incredibly hard—I watch a lot of Kitchen Nightmares), and Belle and Penelope are the victim of men. The story doesn’t caution against a woman exploring her sexuality but rather exploring it at the hand and exploitation of men. Belle’s death is because of a woman following her husband and blaming Belle instead of him for being unfaithful. Penelope’s likely murder is because men didn’t want the truth getting out. To state it more clearly, I think it can seem a simple story, but Kalorama Road has layers of meaning and a message about female empowerment that get use out of being an indie book.