THE ANNUNCIATION

by Ellen Gilchrist ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 31, 1983

Spurts of passionate, colorful irresponsibility made Gilchrist's stories (In the Land of Dreamy Dreams, 1981) unusually refreshing. But that devil-may-care attitude towards plausibility and depth works against her in this first novel: there's a self-conscious breathless blowsiness here that unsuccessfully seeks to convert hysteria and plight into character and complication. When we first see Amanda McCamey, a 44-year-old writer and translator, it's in a flashback to Amanda at age 15: having a baby sired by her adored older cousin Guy, then being forced to give up the child for adoption. Later Amanda will marry rich, Jewish New Orleans lawyer Malcolm; but the marriage will prove barren. (Meanwhile, Amanda's daughter grows to adulthood, marrying and living within, as it happens, the same contagious, neurotic circles of boredom and wealth occupied by her mother.) Amanda's liberation starts by leaving Malcolm and an increasingly alcoholic life, going off alone to the university/arts-hub of Fayetteville, Arkansas--and there becoming a translator of French poetry. In Fayetteville she also falls in love with Will Lyons, a penniless guitar player who's 20 years younger than she is And, after much dialogue of the May/October variety, Will gets Amanda pregnant, then splits, but not before persuading Amanda's daughter (he finds her, not very plausibly) to see her mother again. . . now that the mother is about to give birth to a new baby. Gilchrist swaddles this slender plot in a prose-blanket of staccato musings and nonstop emotionalism: ""It's nota baby. A fetus is a fetus is a fetus. When the child is born the parents start dying. It's a hostage. All it will do is kill me. I can't do this to myself. I can't allow it. I can't let it happen. I don't have a choice. I can't have a baby."" There are elaborate, overdone evocations of drunkenness and desperation. But the characterizations are wispy (the men especially), and the keyed-up narrative never settles clown long enough to establish its premises. Overwrought yet rarely affecting work--and especially disappointing from a writer of Gilchrist's evident talent.

Pub Date: May 31, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1983

Categories: FICTION