Coming Up for Air

by Sara Leipciger

I really enjoyed the lyrical language of this author.

It is an interesting story, trying to try three figures together through history.

The story starts off quite starkly "This is how I drowned".  It starts with a young french girl who coes to Paris to be a ladies companion.  The lady is quite fond of the young woman, unlike the aunt who had been raising her.  The young woman falls in love with another young french woman and is totally smitten with her.  She is devastated when her lover breaks off the relationship.

A young carpenter has seen the two women kiss and he tells the young girl he will expose her unless she has sex with him. She doesn't want to do it but she feels she must.  The young man goes away to continue is apprenticeship but promises he will come back to marry her.  She doesn't want to marry him as she dislikes what he made her do.

After he is gone the girl discovers she is pregnant.  Her employer is very caring and supportive saying   that they can leave Paris and move to a small town where they can pretend she is a widow. However, after the baby is born the young woman climbs into the Seine and drowns.

Her body is pulled out of the Seine and a young apprentice finds her face attractive and makes a death mask of it.  It turns out that her face becomes popular and is reproduced over the years as art.

The second part of the story is about a Norwegian man who is talking to his son (who we later find out drowned while the family was on an outing).  The man became adept at making dolls out of plastic and is eventually called to America to make the face for the official CPR dummy.

The third story is about a young woman, living in northern Canada and later near Ottawa, who has Cystic Fibrosis.  Despite her health she loves to swim in cold lakes and rivers.  The story includes her parents who eventually divorce.

The story ends with Camille, the daughter of the Parisian Girl, in a class to learn how to use CPR to potentially save the life of her husband who has heart problems.

I can see how Camille, Camille's mother and the Norwegian were connected but the girl with CF seemed a bit extraneous to the story to me.  I did love the language the author used in her writing of the story.