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Margaret Songe, currently a practicing counselor, has been an Instructor of English, a Writer-Editor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a manager of movie theaters. She has published feature articles in local magazines and written other freelance work. She grew up on a citrus farm in Chauvin, Louisiana and currently lives in Thibodaux, Louisiana with her silk flowers and a host of colors. The Sundry Worlds of Fiona is her first novel.
Reviewed by Rich Follett for Readers' Favorite
Allegory has always been hit or miss in the world of literature: in the hands of an amateur, it can be tedious and even painful; in the hands of a gifted writer, it can transport the reader to other worlds and impart universal truths. Margaret Songe’s The Sundry Worlds of Fiona is most decidedly in the latter category - unexpectedly affecting, at times compelling, and always a surprise. The ‘Fiona’ of the title is an adventurous silk daisy in a southern Louisiana parish. Restless and filled with existential angst, Fiona, who has been trapped for years in a dimly lit attic after her human home is broken by divorce, takes advantage of a errant baseball and a broken window to liberate herself and see the wider world. Along the way, she befriends some of the “planted ones” (real flowers), a wise oak tree, and other characters both fanciful and achingly real.
Allegory is inherently risky for a writer in that the degree of difficulty is exceedingly high. Characters must be drawn with crystalline precision so that readers experience the requisite emotional connection for the story’s higher purpose to register -- the personification required to bring inanimate objects to life to a sufficient degree to elicit a compassionate response from readers requires the stroke of a master. In addition, the details of the world(s) inhabited by these personified “everyman” characters must be rendered in the kind of focus usually reserved for macro photography. Fiona is, in her every petal, a worthy protagonist and Margaret Songe is, in every syllable of her cinematic narrative, a storyteller to be reckoned with.
The Sundry Worlds of Fiona is chock full of the elements of an epic tale. Call to adventure? Check. Transition from everyday world to a world of wonder? Check. Journey from darkness to light and a subsequent spiritual rebirth? Check. Supernatural forces aiding the protagonist? Check. Confinement in the ‘belly of the whale?' Check. Road of Trials? Check. Atonement? Check. Apotheosis and homecoming, our hero having gained wisdom? Check. It is all in there. The idea that so much could be conveyed so profoundly in the life journey of a silk flower is remarkable in itself; the gripping story, local color, and superb writing? Gravy.
Margaret Songe has created in The Sundry Worlds of Fiona a compelling parallel universe from which the reader may glean insights of inestimable worth. The resulting allegory is fresh, touching, and timely. Wordsworth’s time-honored intimation of “glory in the flower” has rarely seemed more apropos. This book knocked my socks off.
