Annunciation /

Known best for his New England-based Francoeur trilogy, Plante moves into fresh territory here and invents a sequence of situations involving cultural displacement and spiritual crises. Claire is an American art historian living in London and researching an obscure Baroque Italian painter named Pietro Testa, whose work enraptures her by nature of its darkness. Claire is coping with the shock of her husband's suicide, a fact she has kept from her lovely 16-year-old daughter, but all her efforts to protect Rachel are useless: Rachel is raped. And worse, she will not be able to heal and forget this violation: she is pregnant and determined to have the child. Desperate to make life tolerable for her daughter, Claire takes them to Italy in pursuit of a lost painting by Testa--an Annunciation of all things--a quest that eventually brings them all the way to Moscow. Meanwhile, on a parallel track, a despondent art book editor in New York is sent to London on assignment. As soon as he meets Claire and Rachel, he is drawn into the emotional intensity that surrounds them. We never know Rachel's mind. She is as beautiful, enigmatic, and influential as a saint. Plante sets her predicament in troubling counterpoint to the miracle of Immaculate Conception and uses this provocative juxtaposition to explore the meaning of innocence and grace and the value of will and ritual. An intense and significant blend of theology and drama, this is a book with lasting impact. (Reviewed Mar. 15, 1994)0395680913Donna Seaman

In contemporary England, New York, Italy and Moscow, a cast of expatriates seeks meaning and communion as they explore mysteries of art and everyday life in this provocative but uneven work. Claire O'Connel is an American art historian in London researching a thesis on Renaissance artist Pietro Testa. When her 16-year-old daughter Rachel is raped and impregnated, Claire acquiesces to the girl's decision to bear the child and rededicates herself to bolstering Rachel's will to live. This goal becomes intertwined with her search for an undocumented Testa painting of the Annunciation, which takes the two women to Lucca, Italy. Claude Ricard, an art book editor for a Manhattan publisher, is saddened by death in his extended family and disillusioned after an ill-fated affair. He accepts a transfer to London, where he finds a new companion, Maurice, an elderly man born in prerevolutionary Russia. These two eventually meet Claire and Rachel and are drawn into their search for the Testa Annunciation, which takes them all to Moscow. Plante ( The Foreigner ) peoples his imaginative tale with rich characterizations and writes with genuine insight into the mixture of faith, understanding and heritage that shapes our reasons for living. In his characters' frequent moments of epiphany, however, his otherwise engaging narrative waxes jarringly melodramatic, turning the potentially sublime into the merely overblown. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

The prolific Plante (The Accident, LJ 3/15/ 91) offers a cerebral, geographically evocative tour through London, New York, Lucca, and Moscow, following the merging paths of two unhappy seekers. Art historian Claire O'Connel, never healed from her husband's suicide, now suffers desperately from the rape of her wise young daughter, Rachel, and throws herself into her search for a lost painting. Meanwhile, dark-visioned editor Claude Ricard, haunted by his Russian heritage and his unfulfilling sexual relationship, watches the deaths of the people he needs. Through their mutual new friend, the genial, failing Maurice Kuragin, Claire and Claude intertwine their stories in a moody Moscow denouement marked by sadness and strangeness but also by the possibility of redemption. For serious readers at public libraries.-Janet Ingraham, Worthington P.L., Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Issues of faith and will are at the center of this meditative tale set in London, New York, and Moscow--a striking work in the author's signature style. Tall, dark Claire is a lapsed Catholic and survivor of her husband's suicide. Somehow she is not surprised when, while she's off with her lover for a weekend in the English countryside, her 16-year-old daughter back in London is raped. Claire tries to atone for her neglect by cutting off her own personal life in service of her daughter, Rachel; when the girl learns she is pregnant and decides to keep the child, Claire quietly arranges for a leave of absence from school, sets aside her own academic research on the works of a minor (and suicidal) Italian Renaissance artist, and devotes herself to instilling in her broken daughter the will to go on. Meanwhile, in New York, a melancholy young editor of art books, caught in a meaningless affair with a willful young Englishwoman and grieving over the suicide of his soulful Russian-American cousin, seeks distraction in an unexpected transfer to London. There he meets Claire and Rachel and, sensing that his vague but urgent search for meaning melds uniquely with theirs, agrees to go with them to Russia to seek out a long-lost painting of the Annunciation by Claire's Italian artist. Carefully as the protagonists plan their journey, events in chaotic Russia soon overwhelm them--until the sight of the painting, which takes place in near-miraculous circumstances, offers solutions to their lives they that never could have reached on their own. Plante's (The Accident, 1991, etc.) characters may be mere ciphers for the more multidimensional philosophical issues he seeks to explore--guilt and redemption, faith versus rationalism, will versus despair--but his ruminations remain so stimulating that a certain lack of credibility is beside the point. Excellent intellectual escapism, and classic Plante.