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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. On November 7, 1985, Mary Veal, 16, a not especially distinguished upper-middle-class girl, disappears from New England's Semmering Academy. A month later she reappears at Semmering, claiming amnesia, but hinting at abduction and ravishment. The events in Believer editor Julavits's third, beautifully executed novel take place on three levels: one, dedicated to "what might have happened," is the story of the supposedly blank interval; another is dedicated to the inevitable therapeutic aftermath, as Mary's therapist, Dr. Hammer, tries to discover whether Mary is lying, either about the abduction or the amnesia; and the present of the novel, which revolves around the funeral of Mary's mother, Paula, in 1999. There, Mary feels not only the hostility of her sisters, Regina (an unsuccessful poet) and Gaby (a disheveled lesbian) but Paula's posthumous hostility. Or is that an illusion? This structure delicately balances between gothic and comic, allowing Julavits to play variations on Mary's life and on the '80s moral panic of repressed memory syndromes and wild fears of child abuse. While Julavits (The Effect of Living Backwards) sometimes lets an overheated style distract from her central story, as its various layers coalesce, the mystery of what did happen to Mary Veal will enthrall the reader to the very last page. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From AudioFile
Heidi Julavits slips back and forth between past and present to tell the circuitous story of Mary Veal as she returns to West Salem, Massachusetts, for her mother's funeral. Mary mysteriously disappeared as a teenager, only to reappear two weeks later with no explanation for what had happened. Shelly Frasier stays in control of the story's changes in chronology, narration, and dialogue. She excels when portraying Mary's aunt and Mary's manipulative therapist. Frasier's voice remains steady even through detailed psychological analyses and discussion of Freudian theory as Mary tries to come to grips with her past and her less-than-perfect family. Frasier keeps the pace moving and brings a much needed depth to ordinary characters struggling with their disordered history together. H.L.S. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
--This text refers to the
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