Catherine Raynes: A Sea of Unspoken Things and Dream State

A Sea of Unspoken Things by Adrienne Young  

James and Johnny Golden were once inseparable. For as long as she can remember, James shared an almost supernatural connection with her twin brother, Johnny, that went beyond intuition—she could feel what he was feeling. So, when Johnny is killed in a tragic accident, James knows before her phone even rings that her brother is gone and that she’s alone—truly alone—for the first time in her life. 
 
When James arrives in the secluded town of Six Rivers, California, to settle her brother’s affairs, she’s forced to revisit the ominous events of their shared past and finally face Micah, the only other person who knows their secrets—and the only man she has ever loved. 
 
But as James delves deeper into Johnny’s world, she realizes that their unique connection hasn’t completely vanished. The more she immerses herself in his life, the more questions she has about the brother she thought she knew. Johnny was hiding something, and he’s not the only one. The deeper she digs, the more she is compelled to unravel the truth behind the days leading up to Johnny’s death. Ultimately, James must decide which truths should come to light, and which are better left buried forever. 

  

Dream State by Eric Puchner  

Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her in-laws' beautiful lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a cardiac anaesthesiologist with a brilliant future. When Charlie asks Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate, Cece can't imagine anyone less appropriate for the task. Garrett doesn't believe in love, much less marriage. But as she spends time with him and his gruff mask slips, her long-held expectations for her life with Charlie begin to crumble, leading to an impulsive decision that will alter the three friends' lives forever - the events of that July reverberating through marriage, parenthood and across generations. 

  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Teams podcast
from Newstalk ZEDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Twenty to twelve on Newstalks 'DB. Kathyn rains as our
book reviewer on Saturday mornings. She's got two reads for
us this weekend. Hey Catherine, Morning Jack. Okay, let's begin
with a Sea of Unspoken Things by Adrian Young.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
So this is a set primary is very small town
in the US, and you get this kind of airy
feeling right from the start, and it cents it on
this character called James and her twin brother Johnny, and
they're really different people. James is always there to clean
up her brother's mess and take the blame for his chaos. However,
of you always jumped too that where you do jump

(00:47):
into the future, and she started life again after these
tragic events have actually taken Johnny's life, and she's living
in San Francisco. She left to pursue some artistic things,
but she'd left not only kind of Johnny behind at
the start, and her high school boyfriend Micah. And so
two decades later, she's back and bringing back her brother's
ashes and focusing, you know, like on this belief that

(01:09):
Johnny's death was in an accident, even though everybody keeps
telling her that it was, and she really doesn't believe it.
So she starts to uncover their secrets hidden in her
hometown and connections to her brother, and of course Michaeh,
who she had left behind her was very close to
her brother as well, and there is this touch of
magical realism element and they're almost the connection between two
twins really, but it feels quite thrillerlike, and it's told

(01:33):
all the time from Jamie's point of view, and she
has lots of questions and confusion about her past and
trying to understand her brother's motivation, and you get this
great tension and airy connection, just a little bit haunting
as you're kind of reading it and the backstory and
trying to work out how these characters are connected and
how everybody fits in together.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Nice Okay, sounds very intriguing. That's a Sea of Unspoken
Things by Adrian Young. You've also read Dream State by
Eric Pushna.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
So this is set in Montana and Los Angeles and
it follows three people and the later their children and
across about fifty years, and it's a very character driven
novel and it rarely explores the life of these three
characters and the significant others, and so the story begins
in Salish, Montana, where twenty seven year old Ceci is
preparing for her wedding to Charlie at his childhood home,

(02:22):
and Charlie is a surgeon working in Los Angeles, and
he asks his best friend Garrett not only to officiate
their wedding but also look after Ceci in his absence,
and so he yet to almost examine these almost mundane
events that make up their experiences with friendship and pirihood
and marriage and things that might seem ordinary, but there's
a whole lot of these complex and deeply forward characters,

(02:44):
and those imperfections make it really interesting. And the author
has this ability to capture these quiet moments of emotions
and turning these everyday interactions into something much more. And
because the pacing of the novel is quite slow, you
can immerse yourself in these inner lives and the twists
and turns in those human relationships and the mistakes that

(03:04):
they've made in the past, and that repeating of the mistakes.
And it's also interesting a bit of an environmental aspect
to the narrative, as these characters kind of transformed by age.
You see how Montana and Los Angeles have been transformed
by climate change, and you know of this natural extension
of almost half a century spent in the worlds of
Montana and the changes that they've seen. But really at
the heart of this novel is this connection and this

(03:28):
complex emotions that people have between them, and it LUs
with you really long after you've turned the final page.
And it is really interesting the way these three lives
kind of intersect and the change that happens right at
the beginning of the novel, which talk about it, I'll
give it all away, but is really interesting about how
the dynamics change between the three of them and how
their lives intersect and intertwine.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah. Cool, Okay, cool, that's a dream state. Ay you PUSHNIM.
A Sea of Unspoken Things by Adrian Young was Catherine's
first book, and of course both of those will be
up at newstalksb dot co dot nz Ford slash Jack
new music from Elton John and Brandy Carlisle for you Next.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
For more from Saturday Morning with Tame, listen live to
news Talks at b from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio,