Review: 'The Butterfly Lampshade'

©2020 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

The Butterfly Lampshade
By Aimee Bender
Literary Fiction
Doubleday

 A young girl knows enough to lock herself into her bedroom at night when her mentally ill mother is having an episode. When her mother is hospitalized, the girl then lives with her aunt, uncle and newly born cousin as a 10-year-old. The now grown young woman seeks to solidify her position in the world through memory.

Aimee Bender's The Butterfly Lampshade is a quiet, calming book in which finding one's place in the world is possible because of love. Remembering how situations came to be makes the love more real, more tangible.

Three episodes in young Francie's life hold particular meaning for her, because they are occasions when things not real became so. A butterfly matching the ones on a lampshade in her babysitter's apartment appears floating in her water glass. A beetle from a drawing on a school worksheet appears in the backpack in which Francie stored the paper. Three roses matching the ones on a friend's curtain appear on the floor, and she takes them home.

There is no question the objects are real. The roses are seen by her friend, and her young cousin keeps one of them as a treasured object. Through the years, Francie's mother struggles with her illness but finds a quiet place to flourish in a group residence. Francie grows up with her loving aunt and uncle, and her adored cousin, who adores her right back. The family's quiet love is a bedrock to Francie's existence, which is most helpful when she doesn't always feel tethered to the world.

Now grown and ready to face her own questions about the three instances of objects becoming real, and what it means to her place in the world, Francie undertakes daily quiet sessions. In a tent that she and her cousin, Vicky, set up on her apartment balcony, Francie lets her mind go where it will, down any memory rabbit hole. 

It's a brilliant way for Bender to chronicle Francie's life growing up, going back and forth to incidents that held strong significance to her, and go focus on incidents more than once as her ability to remember deepens.

In addition to the larger narrative about love and being solidly in the world, the memories also let the reader in on why Francie, even as a grown woman living alone, still feels compelled to be locked in at night. It's something she felt was necessary even after moving in with her aunt and uncle. When the "why" is revealed, it fits in with the larger narrative of why Francie feels unhinged in the world.

The reader also learns why Francie settles into finding objects and reselling them online, sending them along their journey to become objects with new meaning to new owners.

Anyone who has read Bender's earlier work knows her remarkable talent at descriptive passages that feature stirring language and serve her story. That talent is on full display in The Butterfly Lampshade, as here:

We are all locked in rooms in different ways, and part of growing up is finding different kinds of keys, and meeting the people who will help free you.

May you find the people who are your keys.