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OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: "I was born blue. If my mother hadn’t pushed me out quick as a cat, I would have been born dead and even bluer; her cord was wrapped tight around my neck. She looked at my little blue lips, my blue toes and baby fingers, and she named me after Kali, Kali Jai."

So begins the story of Kali Jai, whose grandmother accidentally-on-purpose misheard the instructions Kali Jai’s mother gave her before they locked her back up in juvie, and filled out a birth certificate with the name Paula Jane Vauss instead. Sounds the same, right?

Turns out Paula Jane/Kali Jai had things to be blue about. Life with Mom, for instance. While Kai (aka Karen Vauss) was a loving parent, she had a difficult time with sticking, meandering through serial relationships of varying intensity, Kali by her side. She may have been the inventor of the Go Bag, or at the very least a skilled expert in its use. And if Kali had grown attached to the man in their lives, so sorry, buh-bye, gotta go, see ya later. Off into the wild blue yonder until the next guy comes along. A tough situation for a kid.

"What a gift, a character whose frontal lobe has not finished developing! Teenagers don’t fully see the consequences of their actions. That’s Christmas for a novelist who likes blowing things up—both relationships and buildings—as much as I do." – from the Writer Unboxed interview

We meet Kali all grown up as she recalls her childhood. She is a fierce warrior of a divorce lawyer, who may seem, at times, to have more than two weapon-wielding arms, and a skirt made of human parts. Of course, Mom had described Kali in a more positive light. “Kali destroys only to renew, to restore justice. Kali brings fresh starts.” The fresh starts Paula/Kali seems most interested in bringing entail a divorce decree and a substantial fee. But there is a large gap in Kali’s life. She is doing well financially, so sends her mother money every month, but that is the extent of their relationship. What happened? The journey that follows is a fabulous story of a grown woman realizing, to her surprise, that she actually wants and needs family, and seeing hers come together, out of a clear blue sky, one orphan at a time.

"I’m very interested in the concept of how you make home, how you get it, and how you fight for it, and how you keep it." – from Public Libraries Online interview

In fact much of The Opposite of Everyone is about the coming together and breaking apart of families, about the yearning for home, whatever or wherever that may be, the lengths to which people might go to get that for themselves and how they cope with disappointment when the hope is unfulfilled.

The tale takes place in two time lines. The first is now, in which we see Paula as a professional, on occasion a basket case, unattached, and uninterested in becoming attached, content in her divorce gladiator life. But when her last check to Mom comes back, with a cryptic message attached, it is a bolt from the blue. Where is Kai? Why did she send back the check? What the hell does her message mean? Kali does a bit of digging, a fair bit of thinking, and opts to enlist the assistance of her usual PI, true-blue Zach Birdwine, erstwhile lover, and contributor of emotional complication to her life.

The other timeline is adolescent Kali. We get a look at her time in a group home, while mom was in jail again, showing how she survives, the friends and enemies she makes, the lessons she learns, and bits of the magic of her relationship with Kai. A third narrative thread concerns Paula’s work, dealing with divorce clients and nemeses.

(Kali the many-armed goddess – from FineArtAmerica.com) 

The conjoining of Southern storytelling and Indian culture is unusual and effective. It came from a very concrete place:

"Three years ago, I started taking classes at Decatur Hot Yoga from the beautiful and excessively bendy Astrid Santana. She often begins class by telling a classic Hindu god pantheon story, but her sentence structure and word choices and even some images come out of the southern oral tradition. It is an odd and compelling blend. Because of Astrid I started dreaming the stories, and then I began reading them. Paula and Kali intersected in my head, and the novel took a sharp turn east."

Jackson was asked once what genre the though her work fit into.”Weirdo Fiction with a Shot of Southern Gothic Influence for Smart People Who Can Catch the Nuances but Who Like Narrative Drive, and Who Have a Sense of Humor but Who Are Willing to Go Down to Dark Places. Upside: Accurate. Downsides: Long. Hard to market,” she said. That sounds about right.

Kali Jai first appeared, as Paula, in Jackson’s prior novel, Someone Else’s Love Story, but there is no plot-line linkage between the books to keep one from reading them independently. Kali/Paula is a wonderful character, and Jackson shows how she came to be the person she is without making the faux pas of telling. While a somewhat feral divorce attorney might not sound like someone you would want to want to spend time with, don’t be fooled. There is a heart there, damaged, scarred, protected, but with chinks, openings, vulnerabilities. You will care about Paula/Kali, and be moved by her life and circumstances. Plus Jackson’s weaving in of Kai’s story-telling and iconography is nothing less than magical.

CONCLUSION: The Opposite of Everything is everything you could want in a book, engaging characters, who grow with time and experience, conflicts with resolutions that make sense (and don’t arrive out of the blue), concern over this peril and that, thematic substance, and some insight into elements of real life that are probably outside your experience. This is a read that may cause you to reach for the tissues by the end, but will leave you feeling anything but blue.

NOTE: Author picture courtesy of Booktrip.com. This review was first posted on Will's blog.