Leslie Manning's Reviews > Impossible Saints

It is hard to believe that this novel is a debut. The author, Clarissa Harwood, certainly writes like someone who has not only done years of homework, but one who writes for a living. I did see on the back cover that she holds a PhD in English Lit with a focus on Brit Lit, and so it would only stand to reason that the novel would be thick with interesting facts. The good thing is that she knows how to take those facts and wrap them up within a wonderful tale, instead of hitting us over the head with them, as many historical authors do. Every time I picked up the book to read a few chapters, I felt as though I'd stepped into a time machine and been deposited next to the characters on the English streets where they reside.

Impossible Saints, which takes place during the early 1900s, is only a fraction of time in an era of suffragettes and their advocacy for women's rights. And yet Harwood somehow manages to saturate such a short amount of time with every nuance of the era. She engages the reader with her insights of religion (not everyone is a believer of god), sex (yes, our great grandmothers enjoyed it, too), and the everyday conversations between early 20th century men and women.

In this book, the fight for freedom goes way beyond what our high school and college history classes taught us. Without spoiling the story, Lilia, the novel's independent and intelligent protagonist, paves the way for all kinds of freedoms, not just voting rights. She ends up in predicaments that we worry she may not overcome, and she falls in love with a man who at first glance is her opposite, but may turn out to be just what she needs.

If you are looking for a story with cliffhangers at the end of every chapter, and page-turning tension, this is not for you. Impossible Saints is a slow and methodical story, with characters doing their best to deal with a world that does not support their feelings, and most times, their decisions. Allow the characters to move you through their world, day by day, piece by piece. Sometimes books are meant to be tasted slowly, instead of gulped down without care. This is one of those books.

My only note is that there is an intense scene which comes later in the book regarding what prison was like for those women who were arrested for their loyalty to independence, and I wish I'd seen more of it sooner, and perhaps with even more detail. But that's just me. Other than that, this is a near-perfect book both in description of the era and ideals of another time. A time in which women had to fight for everything they had, and for everything they wanted for their futures and the futures of other women.

What amazed me most as I read Impossible Saints is the fact that so much of this story is relevant today. In a way, it is a testament to how little people's ideas have really changed, even after so many years.