Closure (expedient/resolution) – a chapter, or an experience, laid to rest with equanimity after arduous deliberation, careful consideration and profound understanding. It opens a doorway, a sigh of acceptance, liberating the individual from the lingering burden of guilt attached to an incident that transpired sometime in the past. Deeply embedded, these transitory yet indelible emotions, lie safely ensconced in the repository of the heart, but at the slightest provocation or the merest whisper, they emerge (slimy and putrescent) like a serpent uncoiling with venomous intent bearing its fangs and ready to poison one’s mind. Reliving such unwarranted memories (déjà-vu incarnate) cascades one into abysses of depression and loneliness, where melancholy eventually becomes a way of life, infiltrating and corroding the present, where even the mundane appears to be daunting and insurmountable.
But what if it is just a superficial closure, where the answers one seeks are forever lost? Does one willingly accept it as an irrevocable loss of truths that will never be redeemed for the rest of one’s lives? Can revisiting places and reliving moments ever be considered equivalent to closure especially when familiar traces and people have been dissolved into obscurity, lost in transition by the passage of time? Can a mental closure suffice in reconciling the loss of a loved one, or in atoning a mistake that should never have transpired? Will a psychological closure truly minimise the trauma and pain that silently lingers in the recesses of memory? Perhaps or perhaps not. Such were the questions that ruminated in my mind as I turned to the final page of the book.
Claire Adam’s book ‘Love Forms’ brilliantly unveils a poignant tale of maternal longing: a woman, desperately searching for her daughter, who attempts to seek closure (both physical and emotional) as her quest traverses memory, time and place in pursuit of answers to a mistake that precipitated her undoing.
The narrative unfolds with the introduction of Dawn, the main protagonist, a beloved daughter of an affluent family in Trinidad, raised with affection in a home nestled amidst the lush greenery atop a hill, and privileged with a private beach in Tobago, she finds herself reminiscing the turbulent times she endured in the early 80’s in order to protect and uphold the family’s honour. A single reckless mistake under the influence of alcohol during the fervour of carnival altered the entire trajectory of her life – pregnant at the age of 16. Back in those days, family lineage and reputation reigned supreme, and to conceal the dishonour and transgression Dawn had brought upon them, her family, under the veil of night, silently transported her through the shadowed backwaters to Venezuela, where, in anonymity she gave birth to the child and the baby was subsequently placed for adoption at a nunnery.
Now fifty-eight, a divorcee and former GP living in London, and the mother of two sons, Dawn, forty years later, remains unable to conceal the pain and the angst of having been separated from her daughter. Love beckons, rekindling her fragile hope of believing in the impossible. Yet years of frantic searching through emails, correspondence, and DNA tests have left her emotionally drained and in deep turmoil, as she desperately tries to piece together the missing fragments of a life overshadowed with shame and secrecy; the weight of memories too heavy to silence or ignore. This entire chapter of Dawn’s life was kept hidden, a pact never to be broken or spoken of within the family. Her futile attempts to find her lost daughter were regarded as a grave hindrance and a deterrent to her marriage, a redundant secret that was well known to both her husband and her kids.
What, then, is the outcome of Dawn’s desperate search for her daughter? Does the narrative live up to its expectations? Do we, as readers, ever reach the climax? Unfortunately, the answer is no. The story, at its core, is straightforward, a mother’s pursuit of her abandoned daughter. In my opinion, the second half of the book falters with unnecessarily elongation of writing and instances, that at times feels monotonous and insipid; the prose appeared forced, when crisp editing could have rendered the narrative more engaging and interesting.