FAMILY FORTUNES

by Anne Melville ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 1984

Certainly this appears to be the last in Melville's Lorimer family series--since the last of the English clan's ladies, slowly beaching themselves here from 1946 to 1977, are determined to spawn no more. In 1946, Russian-born Ilsa Laing, married in name only to Dr. Richard, who rescued her from refugeedom after her years in a concentration camp, learns that she will mother baby Michael, son of the woman whom Richard intended to marry. (The natural mum died in childbirth.) But an even more zinging family secret awaits Ilsa, who continues her career as a talented composer: her beloved mother Katya, believed dead, is not only alive. . . but she's none other than Kate Lorimer, the brave doctor of Blaize (1981) who left for Russia in 1917--and now returns to England after her ordeals, still hoping Ilsa is alive! Kate will be received joyfully at the family place, Blaize, by widowed Aunt Alexa, Lady Granville--that erstwhile, spunky, dazzling beauty who sang for the Tsar. While Alexa frets about the dying-out of the Lorimer line, Kate meets the extended (often convolutedly extended) family: Alexa's only surviving son, homosexual Pirry; her grandson Bernard, who vows (with wife Helen) to remain childless; her great-niece Asha. And, once recovered in health, Kate has a Jamaica reunion with her half-brother Duke, then brings his beautiful daughter Paula to England. There's the strange Kate/Ilsa reunion, loving but fatal; after brilliant music/lyrics collaboration, Ilsa and Pirry are united in death; Paula becomes a writer; and Asha, now grown, marries an Indian. . . whose business interests (ancestral portraits) help to lead Asha to the discovery of her lost sister Ros Davidson in San Francisco. Newcomers will find this series windup an impenetrable genealogical maze--but Lorimer followers should be stolidly entertained, especially since those Lorimer rubies make one last sinister appearance.

Pub Date: May 11, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION