THE WORLD AGAINST HER SKIN

A novel that offers a fictionalized account of the author’s mother’s life, which includes a fight against addiction.

Ginny Thorndike wants to leave her husband, Joe, as she has been having an affair with Rich, a handsome surgeon with whom she’s more sexually compatible; the two often enjoy being in “the Mode” together—their name for the BDSM aspects of their relationship. Ginny can’t imagine living without Rich and the pleasure her gives her, so she asks Joe for a divorce, and after quickly writing explanatory notes to her two teenage sons, she flies to Miami to live with her lover. After Rich arrives in Miami, however, he quickly and tersely dumps her, seemingly out of nowhere. She feels unmoored and flies to Cuba, where Rich grew up. Meanwhile, her eldest son, Jamie, goes missing in a New Hampshire snowstorm; Ginny returns home and senses that something is amiss, and she believes that her son may have staged his disappearance. Later, after traveling to South America with the Peace Corps and settling into a new job back home, she suffers from depression and a dependence on alcohol and pills. Set largely in the 1960s, save for some moments from Ginny’s past, Thorndike’s story occasionally features well-known historical events to provide context, such as the Stonewall riots and increasing “tensions…between Kennedy and Castro.” His prose is most successful when exploring Ginny’s memories, such as her fondness for a former diving coach in spite of the inappropriate nature of their relationship and the moment where she recalls the problems of her first marriage: “She stepped out of her dress and underwear and went in for a swim…and when she came out he held her dress behind his back…punishing her for being free.” The plot does ramble somewhat, as it does not have a very clear beginning, middle, and end. This may be a function of its being based on a real person’s life, although much of it is imagined; still, the work might have benefited from a more direct and streamlined plot.

A sometimes-poignant but disjointed effort.