“The Sunday List of Dreams” is a paean to womanhood, a celebration of friends, of family and, last but hardly least, of female libido. Kris Radish creates characters that seek and then celebrate the discovery of a kind of women’s innate power often hidden by fear.
Connie Nixon has examined her life and made a momentous decision. The 58-year-old happily divorced mother of three grown daughters has run the numbers. With just a bit of downsizing and a part-time job, she can take early retirement after 33 years of hospital work. Though she’s very good at her take-charge role in intensive care, it’s time for a change.
She gives herself three months off between the retirement party and the new job, that of a roving consultant to a string of Midwest nursing facilities. It will be time to clean out the detritus that’s accumulated in her house, getting it ready to sell. It will be time to find a new place to live. It will be time, perhaps, to pursue some of the dreams she’s been writing on a list, every Sunday, for the last 30 years.
The list has been a point of focus and, at times, a salvation. When the girls were small and her husband was working late shifts, when she too was working many hours trying to make ends meet, the list was a necessary escape. Its items could be simple as “Stop setting the alarm clock.” But it also includes larger, subtler, goals: “Take yourself to confession. Make the penance easy.”
The three-month hiatus between jobs seems as good a time as any to take on the list. In the first day of her new life, Connie sleeps late, cracks the bottle of champagne that was a retirement gift and watches movies she’s been meaning to see for years. But that kind of drifting day won’t do as a staple for a woman used to getting things done. It’s time to get down to the business of cleaning out the house, and the garage is the place to start.
Two of Connie’s daughters, Macy and Sabrina, are married and working on families of their own. But her eldest, Jessica, is an enigma. She couldn’t leave her Midwestern roots fast enough, fleeing to a career in the anonymity of New York City. She has not completely cut off contact with her mother, but her communication is distant.
Several boxes Jessica left behind remain in the garage. Connie opens one to discover sketches and a business plan that shed light on her daughter’s life. The paperwork reveals her daughter to be CEO and part-owner of “Diva’s Devine Designs – one of the most successful sex-toy stores in the United States of America.” Connie is out of Cyprus, Ind., and on her way to New York the next day.
Item seven on Connie’s list is “Recapture Jessica. Find Jessica. Hurry, Connie, but start slowly. Find your baby.” The garage discovery is enough to bring out the mama bear instincts and damn the consequences. Jessica is so shocked by her mother’s visit that her habitual guard drops. The two begin a journey of mutual self-discovery as well as a re-forging of long-cold family links.
As Connie discovers she is much better at selling sex toys than she ever imagined, she finds the courage to attack more items on her list. Her fear of failure evaporates as her newly found ability to take risks is rewarded. Along the way, she is encouraged by friends both old and new and discovers that much she has despaired of ever having in her life – romance as well as sex – might be possible.
“The Sunday List of Dreams” is an airy read with the none-too-subtle subtext urging women to uncover the goddess within. Connie’s list is both the hook that draws the reader in (as in, what kind of list would I make) and the engine that drives the story (as in, what would happen if I actually acted on my list).
Adventure lies between the early crisis and the happy ending. It’s a novel that doesn’t require much work from the reader, a light and optimistic escape.
Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer who reviews books for The Denver Post and Buzz in the ‘Burbs.
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The Sunday List of Dreams
By Kris Radish
Bantam, 378 pages, $11
