“It’s not as simple as they make it on TV,” says Freddy. Says the reader, oh, dear, but yes it is.
Veteran Barthelme (stories: The Law of Averages, 2000, etc.) sets a semi-successful professor to wondering about the meaning of life—and the reader can actually take him seriously now and then.
How is it, ponders narrator Elroy, that a person’s life turns out as it does—so that “you have this, suddenly and startlingly not at all what you sought.” The answer is—well, you get older. Elroy, an artist until he got bored with the effort and repetitiveness of it, has been for years an art professor at a college in Biloxi—where he thinks mainly about his female students: the youth, allure, and mystery of them. His regrets at not having taken his sexual opportunities may have something to do with the decision he and his wife Clare make at story’s opening to “get some space into the marriage, some room to maneuver.” Elroy takes an apartment with a view of the water—and finds himself involved with student-aged kids: his own stepdaughter Winter, her racy female friend Freddy, the talented but troubled art student Edward Works (who’ll die), and Winter’s seeming lover, the curious Victor. Things wander as Elroy ponders his life and the unfulfilling world around him, fixates on the sexy Freddy, gets fellated by her in his college office, and . . . ? To fill book’s middle, there’s a pointless car trip to Memphis and Dallas taken by Elroy, Freddy, Winter, and Victor, with overnights, an Elroy/Freddy consummation, a hackneyed stick-up in a roadside stop-n-go, and a homecoming in Biloxi where wife Clare is troubled by the Elroy-Freddy consummation. The whole is accompanied by ultra-tough-talk (“It’s not a hard ass thing, it’s just shit happens. I mean, people say this stuff about it, but it passes”), and, after some quite lovely nostalgia-riffs by Elroy as he remembers his childhood, he finds himself gravitating back toward Clare.
“It’s not as simple as they make it on TV,” says Freddy. Says the reader, oh, dear, but yes it is.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-58243-218-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.
A forsaken family bound by grief still struggles to pick up the pieces 12 years after their mother’s death.
When famous author Gil Coleman sees “his dead wife standing on the pavement below” from a bookshop window in a small town on the southern coast of England, he follows her, but to no avail, and takes a near-fatal fall off a walkway on the beach. As soon as they hear word of his accident, Gil’s grown daughters, Nan and Flora, drop everything and return to their seaside family home in Spanish Green. Though her father’s health is dire, Flora, Gil’s youngest, can’t help but be consumed by the thought that her mother, Ingrid—who went missing and presumably drowned (though the body was never found) off the coast more than a decade ago—could be alive, wandering the streets of their town. British author Fuller’s second novel (Our Endless Numbered Days, 2015) is nimbly told from two alternating perspectives: Flora’s, as she re-evaluates the loose ends of her mother’s ambiguous disappearance; and Ingrid’s, through a series of candid letters she writes, but never delivers, to Gil in the month leading up to the day she vanishes. The most compelling parts of this novel unfold in Ingrid’s letters, in which she chronicles the dissolution of her 16-year marriage to Gil, beginning when they first meet in 1976: Gil is her alluring professor, they engage in a furtive love affair, and fall into a hasty union precipitated by an unexpected pregnancy; Gil gains literary fame, and Ingrid is left to tackle motherhood alone (including two miscarriages); and it all bitterly culminates in the discovery of an irrevocable betrayal. Unbeknownst to Gil and his daughters, these letters remain hidden, neglected, in troves of books throughout the house, and the truth lies seductively within reach. Fuller’s tale is eloquent, harrowing, and raw, but it’s often muddled by tired, cloying dialogue. And whereas Ingrid shines as a protagonist at large, the supporting characters are lacking in depth.
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-941040-51-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters...
Female rivalry is again the main preoccupation of Hannah’s latest Pacific Northwest sob saga (Firefly Lane, 2008, etc.).
At Water’s Edge, the family seat overlooking Hood Canal, Vivi Ann, youngest and prettiest of the Grey sisters and a champion horsewoman, has persuaded embittered patriarch Henry to turn the tumbledown ranch into a Western-style equestrian arena. Eldest sister Winona, a respected lawyer in the nearby village of Oyster Shores, hires taciturn ranch hand Dallas Raintree, a half-Native American. Middle sister Aurora, stay-at-home mother of twins, languishes in a dull marriage. Winona, overweight since adolescence, envies Vivi, whose looks get her everything she wants, especially men. Indeed, Winona’s childhood crush Luke recently proposed to Vivi. Despite Aurora’s urging (her principal role is as sisterly referee), Winona won’t tell Vivi she loves Luke. Yearning for Dallas, Vivi stands up Luke to fall into bed with the enigmatic, tattooed cowboy. Winona snitches to Luke: engagement off. Vivi marries Dallas over Henry’s objections. The love-match triumphs, and Dallas, though scarred by child abuse, is an exemplary father to son Noah. One Christmas Eve, the town floozy is raped and murdered. An eyewitness and forensic evidence incriminate Dallas. Winona refuses to represent him, consigning him to the inept services of a public defender. After a guilty verdict, he’s sentenced to life without parole. A decade later, Winona has reached an uneasy truce with Vivi, who’s still pining for Dallas. Noah is a sullen teen, Aurora a brittle but resigned divorcée. Noah learns about the Seattle Innocence Project. Could modern DNA testing methods exonerate Dallas? Will Aunt Winona redeem herself by reopening the case? The outcome, while predictable, is achieved with more suspense and less sentimental histrionics than usual for Hannah.
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters and understanding of family dynamics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-36410-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
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