From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This taut psychological drama by Orange Prize–winner Berne (
A Crime in the Neighborhood) unfolds as San Francisco freelance writer Cynthia Fiske acquiesces to her maternal older sister, Frances, and attends the Thanksgiving family reunion Frances is hosting at her perfectly restored Colonial home in Concord, Mass. Cynthia believes her father, now 82, murdered their invalid mother with an overdose of pills when Cynthia was 13, and she has no wish to ever see him again. Within months after their mother died, their father packed Frances and Cynthia off to boarding school and married the much younger Ilse, a graduate student who worked as part-time tutor to Frances. But now he's suffered a stroke. Ilse is divorcing him, and the family is placing him in a home. Tension is high by the time the assorted guests, including Frances's complicated teenage daughters, her mysterious husband and the speech-impaired patriarch, are called to Frances's table, and it doesn't take much to fan the first flares of anger into the inevitable conflagration. Berne takes an inherently dramatic conflict—one sister's intention to obfuscate the hard truths of the past vs. another's determination to drag them under a spotlight —and ratchets up the stakes with astute observation and narrative cunning.
(Oct. 20) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe:
Gebundene Ausgabe
.
Berne (
A Crime in the Neighborhood, 1997) sets this unsettling novel in a picture-perfect colonial house in Concord, Massachusetts, during the Thanksgiving holidays. But the family that gathers there is riddled with secrets, jealousy, and guilt. The narrator, Cynthia, is single and a writer for a young-adult series called Sisters of History (or, as her colleague wryly refers to it, "hysterical fiction for young girls"). Her married sister, Frances, has inveigled Cynthia to visit, intent on fostering a reunion with their long-estranged father, now 82 and suffering paralysis from a stroke. Cynthia believes that her father is responsible for her invalid mother's death when Cynthia was only 13, while Frances has a very different take on the past. As the family gathers at the table, tense arguments ensue as bitter feelings and warring memories erupt in ugly fashion, ensuring a memorable holiday experience for all. Berne uses a number of skillful techniques, including an unreliable narrator and the dark connections between Cynthia's books and her personal life, to create a truly horrific atmosphere.
Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe:
Gebundene Ausgabe
.
