When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. (Author Tour)Ī flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. McKinney-Whetstone's material this time, though, is not nearly as strong as her voice. A satisfying end makes up, somewhat, for a convoluted storyline. It takes time, persistence, and luck, but eventually the family is reunited, and even Mae and Ramona seem moved to try to rebuild their own relationship.
Meanwhile, Clarise survives her ordeal in the asylum, but when she gets out, she can't at first find her daughters. In fact, Ramona's interactions with her boyfriend and her boyfriend's father are among the more disturbing elements in the story. Although Mae is decent to Shern, Victoria, and Bliss, she has some serious problems of her own, and her abusive behavior toward Ramona strains credibility, even though Ramona herself is not the most lovable of characters. They end up living with the hard-edged Mae, a gambler, and her neglected daughter Ramona, in a blue-collar neighborhood where everything is foreign to them. As a result, Clarise is institutionalized and the girls are assigned to foster care. Clarise, in mourning, is prescribed Valium no one knows that she's allergic to the drug, and so when she collapses it's assumed that she's attempted suicide by overdose and is having a breakdown caused by her husband's death. An inexperienced boater, he drowns in a sudden storm, thinking, as he dies, of Clarise and the girls. Their mother, the light-skinned, lighthearted Clarise, and their father, the dark-skinned, dashing Finch, have a charmed marriageuntil Finch's catering business hits rocky waters, and dire financial need causes him to go out on a fateful crabbing trip.
A trio of Philadelphia-born sisters is the focus of this solid if uninspired second novel: Shern, Victoria, and Bliss are born to loving, well-meaning parents, but the forces of circumstance cause their lives to change drastically one day in 1965. McKinney-Whetstone (Tumbling, 1996) scores big on mood and language, less on plot and character.
0 kommentar(er)
