IN THE HEART OF THE WHOLE WORLD

by John Rolfe Gardiner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 1988

Gardiner has attempted here to paint a Scott-Spencerish picture of obsession--but one with trompe l'oeil qualities, shifting even as you look at it. What he's ended up with, though, is a flogged-on, contrived, and toneless sort of book, in which the obsession is not ever convincing. Ray Sykes is a high school teacher in the Virginia exurbs, near Washington. He has fathered a child by a graduating student, Sarah, who then wants nothing to do with him. But the child, Sonia, remains Sykes' uppermost thought. He lives his life--hooking up with a local woman (a talk-show host) and teaching an innovative local history course--but soon, as Sonia grows and begins school, his old obsession is only rekindled. And when she goes to the same high school where he teaches, his snooping and spying on her become insupportable; he's eventually fired. Meanwhile, Sonia is a hellion--ringleader of a sex club that meets regularly in the closed-off dressing rooms of an out-of-business department store in the local mega-mall. Worse, she's been immortalized on the glass roof of the mall by a Mexican painter who has watched the sex-club variety-show from his scaffold high above the mall floor. Far-fetched? Wait. Sonia eventually leaves town altogether, only to reappear as a kind of Garrison-Keillor-type, with her own radio show devoted to monologues about her home town--and under these auspices comes Sykes' redemption. After 50 pages of so, you have the sinking feeling that Gardiner (Going On Like This) is making mulligan stew, throwing together homely elements like malls and radio shows and high-school guidance reports for lack of more intensely charged material. And the characterization hardly helps: Sykes and Sonia and Sykes' girlfriend Laurenette are all vague, smeary folk, drippy almost in their lack of inherent drama. Disappointing.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION