Lost Geography: A Novel [Paperback]

Everything goes in cycles in Bacon's quietly impressive debut novel (following her short story collection, A Private State), in which three generations of down-to-earth young women weathered by adversity seek less steady but sufficiently tractable men for taming, childbearing, then marriage. For Margaret in Saskatchewan in 1933, her daughter, Hilda, in Toronto, and her daughter, Danielle, in Paris, the more things change, the more they stay the same. All these women are strong, reserved, sensual, practical and capable of one major move, after which they settle down, eternally faithful to their offspring and the mate from whom they are parted only by death. Each man has one or two salient characteristics (Davis is a secret lover of beauty, Armand deals in antiques and generosity, Osman in secrets and gambling), but each couple is similarly devoted, and apart from a mother-in-law or two, sufficient one to the other. No one has friends outside the family. These are quiet people who communicate largely without talking, so the dialogue is limited, apart from pointed stories about earlier generations. Bacon's rather detached third-person narrative, which moves from husband to wife, also keeps the reader at a distance. But her prose has a pleasing simplicity that makes the book a quick and pleasurable read, and she captures moments well, as when Danielle and Osman, getting serious, "sat there for a few more minutes, quietly measuring each other's capacity for danger." Cool as the novel can be, its conclusion, set in 1990s New York, where Osman moves with their children, Sophie and Sasha, after Danielle's death, glows with a hard-won warmth. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The family featured in Bacon's tale moves among Regina, Saskatchewan; Toronto; Paris; London; and New York City and takes place between 1933 and the present. The book opens with the first narrator, Margaret, a nurse, who meets her future husband, Davis, a Scottish immigrant, when she treats him for a bad case of the flu. They fall in love and raise three children: Hilda, Jem, and Stuart. The second narrator, Hilda, then moves on to Toronto, where she creates a new life and gives birth to Danielle, the third narrator. After school, Danielle moves to France and meets Osman Harris, a Turkish-English man. They marry and have two children, Sasha and Sophie, the final narrators of this tale. A neatly interwoven story of landscape, personal history, and survival, this multigenerational first novel contemplates how much we are made up of our past as well as out present. With well-drawn characters and a subtle palette for a plot, this is a very good book about loss and change. For public and academic libraries.
Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Spanning four generations in her first novel, Bacon closely examines the evolution of women's roles during a period of more than 50 years. Beginning with Margaret, a farmer's wife, and ending with Margaret's great-granddaughter, Sophie, a student in New York City, Bacon focuses on the transition to womanhood and the emotional break each woman makes from her own mother in order to become an adult. Margaret becomes a nurse before settling down on a farm in Saskatchewan with her new husband. When she dies, her daughter, Hilda, moves to Toronto, gets a job at a travel agency, and then has a daughter, Danielle, out of wedlock. Danielle vacations in Paris, where she meets and marries a Turkish carpet salesman. When she dies, her daughter, Sophie, is sent to school in New York. Uncertain of herself but determined to pursue her dreams, each woman is shaped by the social conventions and prescribed gender roles of her time, and each must find a way to be happy despite the limitations placed upon her. Bonnie Johnston --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

A lyrical first novel from Bacon (A Private State: stories, not reviewed) exploring the cycle of loss and renewal as it works itself out in the lives of four generations of women. The cycle begins with Margaret Evans, a bright, self-reliant young nurse in 1930s rural Saskatchewan. She tends a seemingly taciturn Scotsman, Davis Campbell, when he falls sick, and almost immediately realizes he is a romantic kindred spirit. Campbell had come to Canada in search of adventure. Instead he and Margaret settle down, run a successful farm, raise a familyand die in an accident. Their daughter, Hilda, is just 18 when theyre killed, and, possessed of her father's watchful intelligence and restless spirit, moves to Toronto in search of new possibilities. Her hopes of wandering farther are curtailed when a brief liaison results in pregnancy. Her daughter, Danielle, is almost as resilient and independent as Hilda, who has become a successful businesswoman. Danielle heads to Paris, where she meets and marries the charming, reticent, conflicted Osman Harris. Osman, a half-Turkish, half-English dealer in Oriental rugs, finds that Danielle, with her calm certainty, provides the compass he had lacked. When she grows ill and dies, grief-stricken Osman and their two children, Sasha and Sophia, feel suspended, motionless. Osman moves them to Manhattan and buries himself in business, while Sasha spends most of his time obsessively cataloging fugitive signs of natural life in the city: birds, plants, the occasional coyote. It's left to Sophia, 14, to do something to draw her father and brother back into life, embracing it as her mother and grandmother did. She manages this in a particularly deft, satisfying scene. Bacon's prose is lyrical and exact. Her descriptions of the ways in which love compels risk in each generation are fresh and moving, and her portraits of several complex women, each struggling to find her unique strength and identity while passing on a sense of life's possibilities, is often exhilarating. A resonant, impressive debut.-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.