"A huge-hearted, ebullient novel about ghosts, tragedy, love, redemption and one extraordinary woman’s wild ride to self-discovery. Blazingly original, the remarkable Fowler breaks your heart , makes you believe in love, and whispers unbreakable truths about who we are really meant to be." ~~Caroline Leavitt, Author of Girls in Trouble

“Connie May Fowler is a raucous, unpredictable and completely compelling storyteller. This contemporary tale of love and marriage and identity is populated with angels, ghosts, villains, and saviors – an exuberant cast of unruly characters – and Clarissa emerges among them all as someone readers will want to hold onto. How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly is a wild, tempestuous, otherworldly read.”~~Julianna Baggott, Author of Girl Talk and The Madam

"Florida novelist Clarissa Burden is suffering from writer's block.  She lacks no creativity when daydreaming up death scenarios for her philandering buffoon of a husband, but when it comes time to put fingers to the keyboard her mind is blank.  However, on June 21, 2006 (the longest, hottest day of the year), Clarissa will encounter no less than: a multitude of ghosts, a one-armed angel, a one-eyed man, a sexy young love interest, a dwarf circus, and a host of critters.  Each one in some way will grant her the courage it will take to escape the dull monotony of her day-to-day and write a new story.  Fowler, as in her previous work (Sugar Cage, 1992: Before Women Had Wings, 1996), lends magic and voice to the singular Florida landscape and gives an interesting twist on the novel; she blurs the line between the written and the writer here, and we get to witness Clarissa's brave discovery that the real truth is often the most risky to tell."~~Booklist

"In this novel by bestselling author Fowler (The Problem with Murmur Lee) past and present lives collide in magical and violent ways with surprising, liberating, and redeeming results.  The colorful characters include an almost-angel, carnival dwarves, and anthropomorphic animals, and the result is folksy and sophisticated, and humorous yet at times grave and appalling, with the sins of the past clearly depicted.  VERDICT A seductive and thoroughly satisfying read."~~Jyna Scheeren, NYPL

We followed Mrs. Dalloway through a 24-hour period and learned all variety of things about her hidden springs of thought and daily action.  Now comes Clarissa Dalloway’s 21st century counterpart, Clarissa Burden.  Our modern gal, whom we also follow throughout the course of a day, does not begin by flower shopping for an evening dinner party in London circa 1923, but by tending her own flower garden in the lovely southern plantation home of Hope, Florida, which she shares with her South African artist husband, Iggy.  The year is 2006. 

They are a handsome couple—35-year-old Clarissa and her 51-year-old husband.  And they are considerably well off, thanks to the sales of Clarissa’s two highly acclaimed, best-selling novels.  But all is not well, not well at all.  For one thing, Clarissa is suffering from a debilitating case of writer’s block; she fibs to her agent that it’s coming along, but in truth she cannot even begin.  And then there’s hubby, who is fond of painting naked young models in the back yard (and lunching with them later) while all but dismissing his wife who is fearful of standing up to him.

We begin to understand why Clarissa defers to her husband and lets herself be so demeaned as we learn of her past:  growing up poor in a trailer with a mean and verbally abusive mother who once told her, “You’re dead to me.”  She has developed a highly imaginative fantasy life to help her cope, including death-scene scenarios involving her husband, which give her a momentary pick-up; and as for herself, she envisions a free fall from the Sears Tower; how it ends, she doesn’t know, but at least she can fly.  And then there are the “ovarian shadow women” whose voices occasionally arise to cheer her on or mock, a sort of internal Greek chorus.

On this day, a man approaches her garden gate—“a short, muscular man, maybe her age, with bamboo-colored dreadlocks that ran past his waist”; missing his right arm, his teeth too white, his fingernails too long.  “Can I help you?" she asks, to which he answers, “No, but I think I can help you.  My name is Larry Dibble.”  Clarissa remembers the southern superstition about the devil:  when he takes human form  he’s always missing a body part, and he asks for permission before coming onto your property.  Not that she believes in such things, but . . .   Larry Dibble is there to tell her that the big oak tree in her back yard is sick and needs to come down, and he’s the man for the job.  She gives him a firm no.  What Clarissa does not know is that Larry Dibble is a precocious, mischievous angel who has been sent to Hope for one last chance to gain his wings.  Yes, it is the day of the summer solstice, and spirits are about!

Larry Dibble is a spirit incarnate, but he has seen what others cannot see:  a crazy black man hacking away on the oak tree, and he’s been hacking away for two centuries no less.  Inside is another ghost whom Clarissa senses as he rolls marbles:  the ghost boy Heart Archer, son of the crazy black man under the tree.  Heart’s beautiful mother, Olga Villada, the daughter of a Spanish flamenco guitarist, also inhabits the grand home.  If Clarissa had read the dossier about the history of her house, which lies nearby, she would have known that Olga had designed the house which her husband built, and was quite intimately involved with it.  Olga wants to  help a woman in need—in addition to having her own motive—and so she defies ghost protocol by ‘moving’ the dossier closer to Clarissa.

Meantime, Clarissa has a tentative meeting with Leo Adams, a former student from a writers’ workshop, who rather fancied her, and is coming to nearby Tallahassee for a reading as he is now a writer himself - a rough equivalent of Mrs. Dalloway’s ex-suitor Peter.  Clarissa wants to make the short trip to see him, but hubby has taken the car, so she is left with only a broken-down pickup full of garbage. But, on this day of days, she forges on, encountering all sorts of new people and places, including a ‘killing ground’ of female  ghosts.

From here on, slowly but steadily, with the help of the spirit world, Clarissa finds her wings.  And when a woman finds her wings and flies, it’s a joy to behold.  Past mysteries are resolved,   mental blocks unblocked, a new strong voice emerges, and all culminates in a raucously fantastic happening at “The All-American Dynamite Dwarf Carnival” which has come to town.

Connie May Fowler is a storyteller extraordinaire.  You can feel the summer heat in the lazy southern town, catch the scent of roses, and empathize with Clarissa’s self-imposed entrapment by her husband.  You want to say, “Come on, girl, stand up for yourself!”  So in a sense the reader joins the chorus of the spirit world, which flits on the margins of the everyday .  So powerful is Fowler’s narrative that you’re left to wonder just what  passes unseen around us.  

Clarissa Dalloway’s world seemed to indicate the strength and weakness of an entire post-WWI civilization. Clarissa Burden’s world is more about the female spirit, ending on a much more optimistic note, but historical past wrongs are brought to light, and the current state of affairs made clear.  While watching TV footage on CNN, it is said of Clarissa:

The war in Iraq—the casualties, the lies, the misery delivered on the wings of ineptitude, the casual quagmire of it all—infuriated her, and she wondered why Americans, herself included, hadn’t taken to the streets, demanding an end to an immoral war.  It was as if the entire world, in the early years of a new century, had given up believing in higher callings.  Peace, love, and understanding felt like quaint ideas proffered by a naive people.

This could have come straight from her older namesake.  But if Clarissa Burden can learn to fly, can not a nation rise as well?   There is this new young senator Clarissa has seen speak on TV, a Barack Obama.  She likes what he has to say.  And let us not forget the name of her hometown:  Hope.  In light of current difficulties it may be hard to cling to, but many of us do.  And Clarissa Burden reminds us that the worst of circumstances can change.~~Jill Adams, The Barcelona Review

Virginia Woolf’s Clarissa Dalloway buys flowers for her party, as does Michael Cunningham’s Clarissa Vaugn. We follow both through twenty-four of “the hours.”

Connie May Fowler’s Clarissa Burden, a writer afflicted with a profound case of writer’s block, tends her roses on the blisteringly hot summer’s solstice in the southern small town of Hope, Florida, located in the rolling, green hills of north Florida’s plantation belt. Her story will also unfold in a single day.Clarissa Burden, an attractive 35, shares her beautiful southern plantation home with her 51-year-old husband, Iggy Dupuy. Iggy is an overbearing, ego-instantiated, fraudulent artist who sketches naked co-eds, “models.” He also takes them to lunch and god-knows where else… Iggy and Clarissa are afforded the luxury of this handsome historical property thanks to Clarissa’s sales of her two previous critically acclaimed, best selling novels. Iggy, it seems, like someone to whom much has been given and not enough asked, is resentful. He is also mean and demeaning, controlling and cruel. Further, he has sexually ignored Clarissa for two years ensuring that her wish for children remains impossible.

Clarissa’s accommodation, even deference, to this jerk-of-a-husband originated with her childhood powerlessness under an abusive mother. Instead of taking action against Iggy, Clarissa takes refuge in an elaborate fantasy life she has used as a coping mechanism since her terrible childhood. These fantasies involve deathly accidents on out-of-control riding lawn mowers for Iggy and her own free-fall from the Sears Tower. Although we contemplate Iggy’s accidents with a certain kind of glee, we also reckon Clarissa’s passivity will prevent a homicide or suicide. She also takes guidance in these matters from her “Ovarian Shadow Women” who form an internal Greek Chorus, alternately cheering and chiding Clarissa. Her other imaginary friends include a very fey, chatty Deepak Chopra in vividly red-framed glasses and a house fly who is in love with her. In spite of the intervention of these lively and very funny figments Clarissa still has no purchase on any forward movement, in writing, or in life. We wait and wait for the spirit to move her.

At long last the moving spirit(s) appear as the ghosts of the unusual family who built Clarissa’s plantation home. Theirs is a story of love and tragic historic circumstance, resulting in doom. It is their sad, fine story within a story that causes Clarissa’s fog to finally fall away and her mental and emotional shackles to slacken.

We are swept along praising and cursing, laughing and crying, through Fowler’s luminous writing and seamless transitions, as Clarissa’s spirit emerges in unexpected ways against her feelings of failure and destruction coupled with the passionate and profound. We make the important discovery that Clarissa’s fantastical, exuberant, and determined journey can be repeated on any day, in any life, through the simple act of perception and consciousness. The font of richness and bounty from one day of stifling heat and cold marriage– as described in this book– could wake any reader who has been placidly and numbly residing in what turns out to be, this extraordinary life.~~Tricia Collins, Like the Dew