CONDUITS BY JENNIFER LORING - BOOK REVIEW

 
The Conduits is a short read by Jennifer Loring full of atmospheric darkness and haunting themes of mental illness. I believe the book’s length would place this as a novella, so it was a quick and interesting read.
 
The main character, Mara, is a young Japanese-American woman who deals with a tragedy from childhood/teenage years as well as the recent, sudden death of her boyfriend, Jason. She struggles to keep herself together, using self cutting as a way to deal with her intense emotional pain.
 
The book is structured into three parts - the first part, “The Nothing,” does a great job of setting the tone. We see Mara’s struggle pain and depression while trying to hide its depth from her roommate Andrea. We see the types of dreams she has, filled with symbols she tries to make sense of. We watch as she moves more and more throughout her own understanding of reality until she is confronted by Andrea who is now very frightened of what Mara is becoming.
 
In the second part, “Committed,” Mara struggles each day in a psychiatric ward. The dreams continue, and the conversations with the other patients only add to the puzzle and add to the internal debate over that which is real and that which is delusion.
 
And it all cumulates into a fast ending in the third part, “Conduits.” This part takes us deeper into her dark dream, as she walks further into an old house which appears to symbolize her grandfather’s house in Japan she’d visited as a child. She moves further and further into the shadows to learn the terrifying truths about spirits trying to reach her.
 
Overall, I think this storyline and the settings are extremely creative. Jennifer intricately weaves nightmare and reality into Mara’s tale so that I was left wondering if I was reading about her dreams or about her reality. That can sometimes frustrate me - not knowing concretely where the character is at - but there is a touch of dream and reality in every scene which makes the plot very clever. The scene descriptions were beautifully done. Sometimes it was like I was reading a painting.
 
I also liked how Mara’s dreams were filled with Japanese cultural references. I often found myself stopping to look up words or phrases to get a better picture of what Mara was seeing. Many times the references were in a context where I could gather the general meaning of a word, but sometimes that wasn’t the case and then I’d definitely need to stop to look something up. But it wasn’t so much that it detracted from the general flow too often. Though I could see that for someone who has little background into older Japanese traditions could feel a little lost without looking everything up.
 
I feel like the ending was a little bit too abrupt, but it was still a great and unexpected ending.
 
I came away from the book thinking that this might be something that could raise awareness of mental health issues, namely self-harm. While I have never cut myself the way like Mara has, I do understand how grief and sadness can feel so intense that this type of action may feel like a release. The book could remind us that we all experience pain and grief, and to feel empathy for those who are struggling so deeply that they have a hard time taking care of themselves or staying in touch with reality.
 
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 ginger nuts
 
Book Description:
Mara is a Japanese-American girl with a history of personal tragedy. Though she still cuts herself to quell the pain, she thought the worst was behind her. But her boyfriend's sudden death, and a visit to one of the most haunted places in Washington State, sends her into a spiral of madness, landing her in a psychiatric ward.
 
Already suffering from dreams of a strange, ghost-infested house in the woods, Mara begins to question the very existence of reality. She is forced to confront the truth about her older sister's death and the reason the ghosts have chosen her as their conduit.

 
Review by Kimberly Wolkens

CONDUITS BY JENNIFER LORING - BOOK REVIEW smarturl.it/k7alfo

Mara is a Japanese-American girl with a history of personal tragedy. Though she still cuts to quell the pain, she thought she had left the worst behind her. But her boyfriend’s sudden death and a visit to one of the most haunted places in Washington State send her into a spiral of madness that lands her in a psychiatric ward.
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Already suffering from dreams of a strange, ghost-infested house in the woods, Mara begins to question the very existence of reality. She is forced to confront the truth of her older sister’s brutal murder and, unable to distinguish between nightmare and waking any longer, the reason the ghosts have chosen her as their conduit.

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