FULL CIRCLE

A dissatisfied young woman impulsively marries a wealthy older man in Tate’s novel.

Doria Pritchit enjoys a comfortable existence and loving parents growing up on Long Island, but she evinces contempt for the middle-class lifestyle she considers a dreary mediocrity. Even as a young girl, she dreamed of the “lush, colorful life of a young, beautiful princess who possessed a treasure trove of diamonds and pearls,” a clichéd fantasy unfortunately typical of the author’s melodramatic narrative. Anxious for affluence, she hastily marries Lance Henderson, a wealthy and charming man who doggedly pursues her despite the fact that she’s only 19 years old and he’s more than twice her age. Her parents, John and Vernice, strenuously object to the marriage; the emotional strain of its possibility contributes to Vernice’s untimely death. Doria is immune to their protests, but she quickly realizes, once married to Lance, that their misgivings about him were justified. He subjects her to a reign of “domestic terror,” abuse that includes physical beatings and sexual assault, behavior that continues even after they have a son, Lance Junior. Tate’s tale is a kind of parable—“a human tragedy even the devil would mourn”—clearly meant to didactically communicate a lesson to the reader; it reads like a church sermon. The plot is heavy-handedly moralistic as well as formulaically predictable, and the characters, especially Doria and Lance, never rise above the level of superficial types. The prose is breathlessly overwrought: “Lance swore to himself he would destroy all of those tormenting ghosts of his past by extinguishing Doria Pritchit’s inner light with the negative power and force of his inner darkness.” Only Doria’s parents are sensitively developed—the reader can’t help but empathize with their palpable frustration. Overall, though, this is a lifeless, proselytizing tale.

A leaden morality lesson thinly disguised as a novel.