SIGHTINGS

by Susan Trott ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 1987

This gimmicky novel from the author of The Housewife and the Assassin (1979) and When Your Lover Leaves. . .(1980) is narrated in turns by a full cast of its silly characters, including Hemingway. Despite the gadgetry, this is empty stuff. On and on it goes, short in length, yet oh so long. And the question of whose chapter is whose fast becomes merely wearying. Dyslexic girl-sailor Sunny (""full of light"") Scott, 18, meets Masefield, a Rhodes scholar cum spy, in Paris, where the living is easy and the sex even better (yes, the earth moves: ""the larger quakes from within that minimized the surface sensations""). Meanwhile back home in California, Sunny's father, the famous philosopher Muir Scott, has run off with Sunny's pregnant best friend, Chris (whom Sunny loves like a sister), daughter of drunken, abusive Bart. At the same time, Sunny's mother has again vanished on one of her periodic sailing binges seeking her drowned son Andy. Flying home to deal with this dippy extended family, Sunny enlists the help of her boyfriend, Buster, a motorcyclist of ""brute body"" and bleeding heart (whom Sunny loves like a brother) and who may be her long lost brother. Sunny gives birth to Masefield's son M (whom Buster loves like a father). And M, like Andy, grows up to rendezvous with the sea. Throughout, Muir philosophizes, Sunny sighs, Buster weeps, Bart drinks, and Masefield appears and disappears (and, knowing magic, makes things appear and disappear). Still, Buster has his moments, as does Muir (whose 1917 diary from Harvard contains such entries as ""After a long deliberation, I bought a fountain pen""). But mostly this descends into the Erich Segal school of aphorism ("". . .loving someone is wanting that person to be happy even if you're not included""). And like Mom, out there circling San Francisco Bay, the plot spins round and round, without real characters to anchor it or to haul it into port.

Pub Date: June 18, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1987

Categories: FICTION