CASTINE

by Patricia Chute ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 1986

This second novel by the author of Eva's Music (1983) is an erratically controlled work in which the major characters (a Czech-born minister with a ""solid firm jaw"" and a California couple into exercise, Jacuzzis, and the therapies) seem less engaging than the minor characters (eccentric Czech aunts, a serene Maine mother, Ohioan parents, a cookbook author) who leap to life during their too-small time upon the page. Cassie Randall, 28, a journalist who has chronicled her fellow California communards, comes to Castine with Greg, the author of Putting You in Touch with the Person You WANT to Be. Greg hopes Maine will spark his writing and his relationship with Cassie. Cassie carts an unfinished manuscript on family life-styles which ""has no center,"" but when she rescues Eben Hurley from drowning, she finds that center in the child's mother, Beth, who provides both the heart for her manuscript and a yardstick against which Cassie can measure herself. The local minister Stefan Kollar becomes Cassie's lover. Then Cassie has to choose between Greg and Stefan, between religion and its California pop equivalent, between geographies and kinds of work. There are subplots--Stefan's melodramatic quest to discover how his father died after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and the amusing efforts of the aunts, Vera and Milada, to parlay their discovery of a clock into the fortune they need to fix their teeth. Finally, all the characters converge on Castine. In deft comic scenes, Cassie juggles parents, aunts, lovers, friends, and clock buyers, and makes decisions for her future. The quality of this book is uneven, and, despite fine moments, this is familiar stuff. Even generous dollops of geography and eccentricity can't transform a flat central character or distinguish a run-of-the-mill quest for self. No surprises here.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1986

Categories: FICTION