From Publishers Weekly
The contented life of an independent-minded Aer Lingus hostess?who stays in flight to avoid both exile and entrapment?contrasts with the bitter existences of men and women who live on the same street in Dublin. This meticulously observant second novel from Conlon (Stars in the Daytime) alternates between epistolary chapters and narratives in the first or third person. Conlon begins by introducing us to air hostess Helena, happy with her unromantic marriage and her one child, and her oppressed neighbor Connie, who groans under the weight of caring for three children and a boorish husband. When her life becomes overwhelmingly dismal, Connie begins writing to an Irish political prisoner, Senan. Her best friend, Fergal, footloose in America, at first disapproves, but the correspondence turns out to be a blessing in disguise. Conlon writes with sane, sober wit; her lucid prose is pithy without falling into epigrams. Although the alternation between present-tense letters and past-tense storytelling jars (and perhaps never quite pays for its showiness), her account of contemporary Ireland and the continuing Irish diaspora is sympathetic, well-measured and insightful.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Conlon's first novel is funny and hopeful, sometimes despairing, in the manner of Kate Chopin's
The Awakening. It is the story of Dubliner Connie's struggle to find happiness among the demands of motherhood and the emptiness of an indifferent marriage. She loves her children but resents that marriage and motherhood have overwhelmed the other areas of her life. She finds she can only truly express herself to her best friend, Fergal, and when Fergal becomes unemployed and decides to move to New York, Connie is lost in loneliness--until she decides to correspond with a man imprisoned for his unwitting complicity in a bank robbery. Told by means of letters interwoven with the perceptive comments of Connie's next-door neighbor, the novel proceeds to describe Connie's slowly blossoming romance with imprisoned Sean and the consequences of this affair. Quietly passionate, the novel is romantic but no stock romance. Rather, Conlon unfolds the seemingly simple psyche of an ordinary married woman to display a rich and complex intellectual and emotional life.
Bonnie Johnston
