WORKING FOR LOVE

by Tessa Dahl ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 17, 1988

Heavy, heavy, heavy cello sonata in G-minor by first-novelist Dahl, who is the daughter of short-story fabulist Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal. The unprepared reader who has not read Nears autobiography, As I Am (p. 348), or even the prepared reader, will feel battered by daughter Tessa's one-note, humorless replay of the family tragedies, with her own life-zappings added on--though readers who have undergone hardships anything like heroine Molly's may gasp with sympathetic glumness and shortness of breath. Here, Molly writes these pages to her much older, always irritated, icicle husband Jack, who is devoted to his business and to his Barbie doll office manager. Jack wanted their first child (a girl) to be a boy, but lost interest anyway when the second baby's CAT-scan at six months seemed to show a boy with a clubfoot. Even when the boy was born with a normal foot, Jack merely went on filming the event and hadn't a kind word for Molly. Jack, you see, is just like Daddy, a frost giant who can't bear being touched. Molly had a large but unreturned crush on Daddy, for Daddy was in love with her younger sister, Meriel, a replacement for an earlier daughter, Mary, now dead. Daddy and Mummy also had a brain-damaged boy who had been struck by a cab, and Mummy herself, a movie star, suffered a terrible brain blowout while bathing nine-year-old Molly. Molly ran off at 20 with bitter, battering writer-drinker Peter, who knocked her up; left him, went home to have her baby, married wealthy, jealous Jack, had many miscarriages. And Daddy fell for divorcÉe Grace, while angry Mummy split for the States and career recovery. Molly, now 30, vows to grow up. The author says this book is mostly fiction. It's certainly daring and rather expert. An autobiography, perhaps, might have seemed more forthright and emotionally varied.

Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION