The Cage and the Key

The Cage and the Key
By Amy Abrams (220 pages)
Published by Rantha Press
Bookish rating: 3

This is a difficult book to describe, and apparently I'm not the only one struggling, because the marketing copy itself describes the book as " guide for women seeking personal and spiritual fulfillment in an increasingly volatile world"--a description that, of course, makes the book sound simply awful. Plus it's vague.

The book is actually better than its description. It is fiction, and characters are very compelling and realistically drawn. The writing is lovely, though I found some symbolic goddessy mystical stuff cheesy and contrived.

Our main character is Celia; she gets effed over as a baby and in her youth, so she must come into her own. And that's pretty much it. Thus, as a reader, I could've used more of an overt arc. Or something.

This novel is not a "guide"; it's a story with large themes, such as good stories have. And it's a pretty good story at that, so I think marketing it in such vague terms is a mistake.