A pleasant, homely tale of small lives intersecting with the great. The American author gets postwar Britain’s cramped...
In Heller’s fanciful fifth novel (after Man’s Storm, 1986, etc.), turmoil ensues when an elderly wife and mother in a small English village is revealed to have been an old flame of the Mahatma.
Retired schoolteacher Martha Houghton, mother of three, has always been rather more cosmopolitan than her good-natured working-class husband Sam, but theirs has been a happy marriage all the same. A shadow falls across it, however, when not long after Gandhi’s death, in 1948, Martha receives a letter from his son Harilal, who has discovered a cache of letters, some quite intimate, that she had sent to Gandhi over the previous 60 years. Harilal, who had been estranged from his father at the end of his life, invites Martha to come to visit him in India—and subtly threatens to blackmail her with the letters if she doesn’t. Was Martha Gandhi’s lover? Not exactly, although they became very close friends in the late 19th century, when the young Indian law student stayed at a boardinghouse run by Martha’s aunt, and kept in touch through the intervening years by post and during several of Gandhi’s subsequent visits to Britain. Thinking that Sam would not understand, Martha had kept their friendship a secret. Now she has to come clean. Sam takes the news in stride, but he and their children are stunned when Martha decides to make the journey to Bombay to visit Harilal. An ocean voyage to India in the 1940s is no small feat for a septuagenarian—especially one who has never left England before. But Martha, determined to put some ghosts to rest, sees a new life ahead of her, in India and at home.
A pleasant, homely tale of small lives intersecting with the great. The American author gets postwar Britain’s cramped atmosphere just right.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2004
ISBN: 0-618-33545-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2003
Intelligent, reflective, satisfying fiction from an old master.
Veteran Godwin’s latest (Grief Cottage, 2017, etc.) tracks a half-century friendship between two very different yet oddly compatible women.
The dean and dorm mistress of Lovegood College pair Feron Hood and Merry Jellicoe as roommates in 1958, hoping that sunny, outgoing Merry will be a steadying influence on Feron, who has recently lost her alcoholic mother and fled from an abusive stepfather. The girls do indeed form a lasting bond even though Merry leaves after a single semester to run the family tobacco farm when her parents are killed in a plane crash. They have both taken their first steps as writers under the guidance of Literature and Composition teacher Maud Petrie, and during their mostly long-distance relationship, Feron will be goaded to write three novels by Merry’s occasional magazine publications; she is at work on a fourth about their friendship as the book closes. The two women rarely meet in person, and Feron is bad about answering letters, but we see that they remain important in each other’s thoughts. Godwin unfolds their stories in a meditative, elliptical fashion, circling back to reveal defining moments that include tragic losses, unexpected love, and nurturing friendships. Self-contained, uncommunicative Feron seems the more withholding character, but Merry voices one of the novel’s key insights: “Everyone has secrets no one else should know” while Feron reveals essential truths about her life in her novels. Maud Petrie and Lovegood dean Susan Fox, each of whom has secrets of her own, continue as strong presences for Feron and Merry, who have been shaped by Lovegood more enduringly than they might have anticipated. Feron’s courtly Uncle Rowan and blunt Aunt Mabel, Merry’s quirky brother Ritchie, devoted manager Mr. Jack, and a suave Navy veteran with intimate links to both women are among the many nuanced characters drawn by Godwin with their human contradictions and complexities on full display. A closing letter from Dean Fox movingly reiterates the novel’s conjoined themes of continuity and change.
Intelligent, reflective, satisfying fiction from an old master.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63286-822-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A compelling exploration of self, family, love, and the power of new beginnings.
After a year in a coma, Annie Rush wakes up to a world without her husband, the TV she developed, and a wealth of memories that put her life into context, but as her body and mind heal, she puts her faith in second chances.
As a successful cooking-show producer who’s married to the gorgeous star, Annie knows she’s lucky, so she overlooks the occasional arguments and her husband’s penchant for eclipsing her. She’s especially excited the day she finds out she’s pregnant and, ignoring her typical steadfast schedule, rushes to the set to tell him. And discovers him making love to his onscreen assistant. Stunned, Annie leaves, trying to figure out her next move, and is struck on the head by falling on-set machinery. She wakes a year later in her Vermont hometown, as weak as a kitten and suffering from amnesia. As the days pass, however, she finds clues and markers regarding her life, and many of her memories begin to fill in. She remembers Fletcher, the first boy she loved, and how their timing was always off. She wanted to leave her family’s maple farm behind and explore the world—especially once her cooking-themed film school project was discovered and she was enfolded into the LA world of a successful food show. Fletcher intended to follow her, until life created big roadblocks for their relationship that they could never manage to overcome. Now, however, Annie’s husband has divorced her while Fletcher has settled in Switchback, and just as things look like they may finally click for Fletcher and Annie, her pre-accident life comes calling again. Wiggs (Starlight on Willow Lake, 2015, etc.) examines one woman’s journey into losing everything and then winning it all back through rediscovering her passions and being true to herself, tackling a complicated dual storyline with her typical blend of authenticity and sensitivity.
A compelling exploration of self, family, love, and the power of new beginnings.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-242543-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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