DOUBLE LIVES

by Jane Barnes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 9, 1980

Slow to build up steam--and then hesitant about how to proceed--this second novel by the author of I, Krupskaya (1974) takes a WASP family in Newport, Rhode Island, for a vertiginous spin, circa 1966. Christopher Nicholas, Grotonprepped, has for 20 years toiled in what he believed was honor--for the CIA. The world, though, has shifted around him in the meantime, and what he once saw as clear, unsullied responsibility is now read as dubious ethics. So he will, in one of the novel's few real events, have a heart attack--a fitting accident for this summer of his discontent and displeasure. And closest to the spirit, if not the form, of Christopher's excruciated passion is his 17-year-old daughter Diana, a virgin when the summer starts, not so at its conclusion. Her rebelliousness, emotional klutziness, and intolerable inner pressures all work themselves into a sort of glum froth: like most adolescents, Diana finds herself coming out with statements she knows she doesn't mean even as she says them--and Barnes handles these pre-dialogue states very well indeed. Unfortunately, however, so much inner turmoil often seems merely literary filler, a problem that's aggravated by the non-plot and the rather placid Newport setting. Metaphors spore too readily; wiggly-smart monologues come out everywhere like worms after a rain--it finally all seems too much, on too thin a stalk. Talented work, then, but not enough genuine drama or development to support the well-observed family interactions.

Pub Date: Jan. 9, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION