Pain, grief, and hurt are all part of life in this moving portrayal of the many forms love can take.
An isolated, prickly septuagenarian in London who has lost her husband works to overcome her fears that she is a burden to those around her.
Millicent Carmichael—Missy—married the man she loved, Leo, in 1959. But after a half-century of living, loving, and growing older in a huge house in Stoke Newington, London, he is gone, and she is bereft. Her son and grandson, both of whom she dotes on, live more than 9,000 miles away in Australia, and she is recently estranged from her daughter, who lives nearby in Cambridge. Missy is a difficult person with sharp edges—she knows this, her Leo knew this—and she is at loose ends, having lived in a community for all this time without getting to know anyone because she held so tightly to her family she made no time for anyone else. But now, the loneliness is crushing her. A few life-changing moments happen in quick succession: She faints in the park and meets neighbor Sylvie, who kindly sits with her for a bit; her home is robbed while she feigns sleep; and she agrees to do a favor for brusque neighbor Angela—journalist, friend of Sylvie, and single mother to Otis. And so Missy finds herself tending to a vivacious dog of indeterminate breed, Bob, that she neither wanted nor feels capable of taking care of. Debut author Morrey has deftly created a series of love stories, interwoven together and told in snippets through time: Missy’s undying devotion to Leo, despite his—and her—many flaws; her devotion to her children, which she often isn’t able to verbalize; and her growing niche in the community that Bob—her Bobby, her unexpected companion and confidant—introduces her to during their daily walks. There are no saccharine moments to mar this tale.
Pain, grief, and hurt are all part of life in this moving portrayal of the many forms love can take.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-54244-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Here's another alcoholic nightmare told against a thoroughly knowledgeable background of Mexico, the people and the customs. Geoffrey Firmin's crowded life the world around slowly cracks through drink; not even his marriage to Yvonne, loyal but loved by his step-brother, Hugh, can save him. She leaves to get a divorce, while Geoffrey finds sympathetic cronies and old friends to accompany him from one binge to another. Yvonne's return, just as Hugh is leaving, brings about a new high in Geoffrey's drinking, and a new low in his hangovers. In futile altercation with the local police, Geoffrey is killed. Through the three central characters, there is the Joycean outpour of consciousness, a diarrhoeatic total recall, in the search for the cause of their rejection of life, in their rationalization of their self-portraits, in their knowledge of their griefs, despairs, bewilderment. Their casual, veiled conversations, wandering soul searchings, are highlighted against the Mexican setting, and the effect, sometimes with a brilliance, is a delirium of phantoms. For sophisticates.
Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1946
ISBN: 0061120154
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Reynal & Hitchoock
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1946
BOOK REVIEW
An intricate plot, perfect title, and a harrowing look at the tie that binds.
An absorbing story of a modern marriage framed in Greek mythology.
Groff’s sharply drawn portrait of a marriage begins on a cold Maine beach, with newlyweds “on their knees, now, though the sand was rough and hurt. It didn’t matter. They were reduced to mouths and hands.” This opener ushers in an ambitious, knowing novel besotted with sex—in a kaleidoscope of variety—much more abundant than the commune-dwellers got up to in Groff’s luminous Arcadia(2012). The story centers first on Lancelot “Lotto” Satterwhite, a dashing actor at Vassar, who marries his classmate, flounders, then becomes a famous playwright. Lotto’s name evokes the lottery—and the Fates, as his half of the book is titled. His wife, the imperial and striking Mathilde, takes over the second section, Furies, astir with grief and revenge. The plotting is exquisite, and the sentences hum; Groff writes with a pleasurable, bantering vividness. Her book is smart, albeit with an occasional vibrato of overkill. The author gives this novel a harder edge and darker glow than previous work, echoing Mathilde’s observation, “She was so tired of the old way of telling stories, all those too worn narrative paths, the familiar plot thickets, the fat social novels. She needed something messier, something sharper, something like a bomb going off.” Indeed it is.
An intricate plot, perfect title, and a harrowing look at the tie that binds.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59463-447-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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