Thirty-three Swoons: A Novel
by By COOLEY, Martha
Category: Fiction , Literary

Years after the end of her marriage and the death of her remote, beloved father, Camilla Archer's tightly pinned down existence is upended by her dreams. A man at least as real as her real life begins appearing to her at night, a mysterious figure in a mask and tuxedo, offering up unexpected visions and reinventions of key moments in her past.Camilla sells theater memorabilia for a living, and this odd figure seems familiar. He reminds her of someone named Meyerhold, a legendary Russian director who was killed during Stalin's purges. The masked man collaborated with this director in strange ways - and now he is doing the same with Camilla, serving as the sly impresario of her dreams.So begins Camilla's piecing together of the puzzle of her past. This journey embraces the story of her mother, whom Camilla never knew; her father's life as an international perfumist and his self-devised death; and secrets touching on her recently deceased cousin, Eve, and Eve's only child, Danny, now a young woman. Even Camilla's long-ended marriage must eventually come under scrutiny. Traveling in memory and reverie back to Moscow and Paris between the wars, Camilla has the chance to unknot her life - if she's willing to ask why a ghostly double has infiltrated her dreams and what he's wanting her to discover. Complex scents of loss and love suffuse the novel's atmosphere as family mysteries are resolved, if not solved.