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Tammy Greenwood
stormed onto the literary scene with her 1999 debut
novel, Breathing Water. Critics were taken with her
extraordinary prose and surreal imagery. In Nearer
Than the Sky, Tammy delves into the life of a family
suffering from the frightening effects of Munchausen
Syndrome by Proxy.
The novel centers
around Indie Brown, a woman haunted by her past, by a
childhood that she'd rather forget. But a late night
phone call from her sister sends her away from the new
life she has created in New England back home to the
mountains of Arizona, and back to the chaos of her
troubled family. While in Arizona, events from her
past are suddenly and painfully illuminated. Indie is
forced to reevaluate her relationships with both her
sickly mother, and her younger sister Lily, who is
following in her mother's footsteps just a bit too
closely. --St.
Martin's Press
Tammy Gives
AsherMeadow a Behind-the-Scenes Tour of this Novel
I have been fascinated by MSBP for years, and as a
fiction writer, I always thought that it would be
interesting to explore the disorder in a fictional
venue. I began writing Nearer Than the Sky with the
image of a child left alone in a grocery store parking
lot. And so I put four year old Indie in a shopping
cart and sent her mother back in the store with her
younger sister. I then imagined the terrible things
that could happen to a child left alone in a parking
lot. A storm begins, Indie remains alone, and she is
struck by lightning. But I didn't want this to simply
be a story of neglect, of the irresponsible mother and
her victimized child. And so I imagined what would be
even worse than the abandonment and the ultimate
accident. What about a mother who not only denies that
she ever neglected her child, but retells the story,
making herself the hero? Hence, Judy Brown rewrites
the incident, telling everyone (including Indie) that
she was there, that she saved her, that she would
never have left her alone.
I did not want to write a novel about a victim of
Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy per se. The victims are
often so tangled up in their parents' lies that there
evolves a certain complicity between perpetrator and
victim. I thought it would be far more interesting to
examine what happens to the siblings of the victimized
children. How a mother's attention, even abusive and
destructive attention, can be coveted by the children
who are ignored.
This novel is about Indie's attempt to unravel the
stories her mother has fabricated. As an adult, she
has sought refuge from her past in her relationship
with her longtime companion, Peter, whose family is
everything Indie's never was. She adopts his life,
borrows his family, and seeks happiness in forgetting.
But when her mother ends up in the hospital, having
poisoned herself, she is forced to return home and
face everything she has left behind including her
grown sister who appears to be replicating her
mother's disturbing behavior.
Nearer Than the Sky
by T. Greenwood Hardcover
- 288 pages 1 Us Ed edition (August 2000)
St
Martins Press (Trade); ISBN: 0312265034
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this book
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