{"id":793,"date":"2014-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T20:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=793"},"modified":"2025-01-02T12:07:46","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T23:07:46","slug":"the-strange-and-beautiful-sorrows-of-ava-lavendar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2014\/01\/01\/the-strange-and-beautiful-sorrows-of-ava-lavendar\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavendar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Leslye Walton<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Random House<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, 2014<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">If you are in the mood for a few hours of pure escapism, you could do far worse than dive into <em>The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Although the title suggests this is Ava\u2019s story, it is actually a portrait of three generations of women, and an exploration of the logic (and lack thereof) of love. Ava\u2019s grandmother Emmilienne, haunted by heartbreak and the ghosts of her murdered siblings and sublimes her time and feelings into breads and pastries that have made her bakery into the heart of the neighbourhood in which they live. Meanwhile her mother, Viviane, has spent 15 years waiting fruitlessly for the love of her life (and father of her children return). As for Ava herself, who was born with wings, (which is perhaps not so surprising given the fact her aunt turned herself into a canary), she has been kept hidden from outside eyes for her entire life by the two older women, who fear for her safety at the hands of the outside world and are determined to protect her from all the things that have hurt them, particularly love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">But the teenage Ava, longing for a normal life and with the same romantic dreams of any girl her age, starts sneaking out at night to join her peers. Her actions place her in mortal peril, but also challenge her mother and grandmother to open their own hearts again too. Deamlike and sweet with a gothic touch that keeps it the right side of saccharine, Ava\u2019s story is strange and beautiful indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leslye Walton<br \/>\n<br \/>\nOtago Daily Times review 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[193,370,220,18,407,470],"class_list":["post-793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-193","tag-fiction","tag-leslye-walton","tag-odt","tag-speculative-sci-fi","tag-ya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1991,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions\/1991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}