CONFERENCE OF VICTIMS

The long range effects of a suicide on the nearest of kin are told here in a passionate monotone. Hal Costigan, running for Congress, has been caught with a school-girl, Dotores, and commits suicide. His grief-stricken blind old mother rants at his spinster sister, Naomi, an office clerk, also escapes into marriage with an alcoholic who eventually drifts away. Alone, Naomi becomes promiscuous with various men in seedy hotels. Dolores, another casualty, returns home after many desultory affairs yearning for the security her parents had found together. And at the close, through Hal, Cort and Naomi recognize not only their hatred but also their death-directed desires... There is a brassy, painful reality in the characters and an unhappy insight in the prose that pins them down, but it is certainly depressing and many will not care to share their lonely odyssey.