Cricket in a Fist.

We are all too well aware of the tricks memory can play on us. In Naomi K. Lewis’s Cricket in a Fist, four generations of women from the same family grapple with a haunting past and a difficult present. Though the novel features a supporting cast of fathers, lovers, and husbands, this is undoubtedly a female-centric story. One of the central characters is Ginny, a frazzled and tempestuous mother and wife with a predilection for dwelling on toxic memories. The plot revolves around Ginny’s mysterious accident, in which she suffers temporary amnesia. Although her memories eventually return, the accompanying emotional attachment does not. Styling herself as a “willing amnesiac,” Ginny morphs into a highly successful self-help personality who advocates ridding oneself of all burdens and shackles by simply forgetting them and moving on. Ginny’s daughters, Agatha and Jasmine, are left to deal with their mother’s abandonment. Ginny’s mother, Tamar, and grandmother Esther are Holocaust survivors, a personal history fraught with pain that leaves them cold and distant. The novel is narrated in several of the characters’ voice, a storytelling choice that adds depth and perspective to this complex drama.

While all of these elements might have been overwhelming in other hands, Lewis manages to create a tale that is rich and engrossing. The relationships between the family members ring true in all of their highs and lows. It is sometimes frustrating to watch the characters struggle in the web of secrecy that surrounds their dysfunctional collective past. Ginny’s oblivious selfishness and self-destructive habits, as well as Tamar’s obsession with maintaining a well-manicured façade of normalcy, are especially hard to understand at times. Nevertheless, Cricket in a Fist is a compelling portrait of a family’s attempt at dealing with the far-reaching ripples of a muddy past.