ROUGH WINDS OF MAY

by Nancy Hallinan ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 1954

The rough road of learning to walk alone applies here to Celia (Cissie) Kerr whose Fatuncle, Jubial Kerr, an internationally watched and unpredictable painter, shows her her cage and her chance for escape. At sixteen and enchanted by Fatuncle's wanting to paint her, Cissie fights the change from her long loved home to his carriage house studio, becomes a more distant stranger when she is wooed by the letters of Basil Noble, whose powerhouse mother and warm hearted servant Sarah turn out to be very important people in Cissie's climate of change, and lives in a turmoil of isolation and unrelated existence. Fatuncle's two portraits of her, the little nude sketches, his unreality about money, the history of his association with his model, Monique, which has been part of the family legend, the association with the humpbacked pianist Nina -- all bring a truthfulness and a recognition of happiness which makes home more abrasive until Fatuncle's death opens the cage for her assertion of independence. A holocaust of childhood, this is a montage of moods and insecurities, of intimate interludes and of the strange worlds of adolescence, which is heightened in its translation of the credo and credulities of the artist. Attractive for that certain audience -- but of too specific a dosage for that other.

Pub Date: March 16, 1954

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1954

Categories: FICTION