From Publishers Weekly
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.
From Library Journal
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., OHCopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
