BURNING MARGUERITE

Inness-Brown (stories: Here, 1994, etc.) offers a closely drawn, richly imagined study of two characters—a young man and the elderly woman who raised him—on a remote island in New England.

The story opens as 35-year-old James Jack emerges from his winter cabin to discover the body of his 94-year-old “Tante”—Marguerite—dead in the snow nearby. From here, Inness-Brown slowly, intimately coaxes along the tale of their unlikely relationship. Marguerite, born and raised in a strict household, had fallen in love early with a fieldhand, Daniel, and with him conceived a child that was later aborted. Daniel is murdered by her father, and Marguerite marries again. Intentionally sterilized during the abortion, Marguerite grew into possession of her talents as an artist with Judith, an elderly divorcée with an eye for wildflowers. Her paintings of local flora are a hit, and for some time she lives happily with Judith—until their house burns down and Marguerite’s work is destroyed along with it. Having relocated to Grain Island, in New England, Marguerite is visited one day by James Jack’s young mother, carrying her infant son. He’s in need of daycare, she tells the by-then 59-year-old Tante Marguerite. Tante immediately takes to baby James, and after his parents are killed in an accident, formally adopts him—but not without a struggle from both his family, and other parents seeking to adopt. James and Tante each are given sections to narrate their stories, sometimes overlapping, and each with great and patient detail.

First-novelist Innes-Brown is a fine writer, and fully succeeds in realizing her characters lives, yet her prose is sometimes emotionally desultory: a thick languor acts as a shell in which the intensities of her scenes and moments are glimpsed but not felt.