SECRET PLACES OF THE STAIRS

by Susan Sallis ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1984

Sallis (Only Love, A Time for Everything) seems committed to exploring the possibilities for love in the grimmest life-situations--and once again, despite pockets of implausibility and excess sentimentality, her plain, intense approach yields a measure of real feeling. The narrator here is English secretarial-student Cass, 18, who lives on a farm with Dad, youngish stepmother Betty, and the twins (her little half-sisters); meanwhile, Mum lives over in the town with wealthy husband #2 Alan and 10-year-old Mark, Cass' half-brother. So, as a veteran child-of-divorce, Cass has had to contend with odd tensions (not garden-variety bitterness) when shuttling back and forth between the two households. And then, just as She's falling in love with sexy student Gideon, Cass begins uncovering the secrets behind her parents' quietly strange attitudes toward each other. First comes Mum's enraged outburst when Cass leads Mark into some messy roughhousing: ""You won't send me out of my mind a second time!"" Then, while taking care of the twins in pregnant Betty's absence, Cass finds an old newspaper clipping about the birth of a sister named Deirdre--just one year after Cass was born. So: what happened to this never-mentioned sister? Did she die in infancy, as Dad tersely explains? Cass doesn't believe that somehow, instinctively feeling certain that Deirdre is still alive somewhere. Also instinctively, Cass is sure that ""the Lavender Lady"" (an elderly stranger who turns up here and there) will somehow lead the way to Deirdre. Eventually, then, thanks in part to some sleuthing by Gideon, Cass does find her 17-year-old sister--in a hospital for terminally ill children: Deirdre is an armless victim of very severe Down's syndrome, able to say a single word (""Dearie!""), but now near death. And the novel's final 40 pages movingly, credibly trace Cass' progress from revulsion and guilt to demonstrative love for her dying sister--with help from Gideon (a bit too good to be true), with new understanding of Mum (who never stopped seeing Deirdre) and Dad (who blotted out her existence). Sallis' foreshadowing of the Deirdre secret is a trifle crass; there's a tendency toward melodrama and Message-overstatement. (""Love, guilt and horror. And the strongest of these is love."") Still, with vivid atmosphere and the offbeat Cass/Gideon relationship (edgy, only briefly sexual) as backgrounding, this is forceful, unusual treatment of a difficult subject--somewhat manipulative, perhaps, but stark and touching.

Pub Date: April 1, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION