Review by Booklist Review
On the surface, Beattie's new novel seems a bit academic. Marshall is an English professor at a small college in New Hampshire, and he seems to be experiencing one of those pesky midlife crises, as is Sonja, his wife. But Beattie explodes this convention and creates a drama of escalating intensity about how easily ordinary lives can go completely out of control. Every character has a secret, and, unnervingly, every secret is connected. It all begins when Marshall takes too strong an interest in a pretty student distressed by the trauma her roommate has suffered at the hands of another professor. Marshall barely knows McCallum but is soon entangled in his surprisingly volatile, even violent, life. While Marshall grapples with his Pandora's box, Sonja confesses she's had a rather silly affair with her boss, and then Evie, Marshall's charming stepmother, dies, opening the door on the long-concealed facts of her life. As truth proves to be more elusive than a subatomic particle, Beattie's addled but resilient characters cling to love and strive for compassion, if not comprehension. This is a powerfully composed work of great wit, subtlety, literary finesse, and insight. (Reviewed August 1995)0679400788Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in a small New England college town, Beattie's latest addresses infidelity, isolation and the lingering scars of childhood. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In her latest novel since Picturing Will (LJ 1/90), Beattie again explores the anxieties of the American middle class. Using a deliberately understated narrative voice, she presents the confused world of college professor Marshall Lockheed and his wife, Sonja. As Marshall ponders whether to tell Sonja about his complicated infatuation with a student, Sonja ponders the pros and cons of revealing her brief affair with her boss. Meanwhile, repercussions from their rather unexceptional indiscretions are about to plunge both Lockheeds into some very unusual territory. In the background are Marshall's dying stepmother, a woman with secrets of her own, and a collection of mysterious letters from the past with significant links to the present. Beattie's detached prose captures characters and events photographically: precise images are put forth for the reader to ponder without authorial analysis or elaboration. At its best, this technique stimulates thought and imagination, but it will not appeal to all readers. Nevertheless, this is essential where Beattie's work is admired. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/95.]Starr E. Smith, Marymount Univ., Arlington, Va. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Beattie's first novel since Picturing Will (1990): a chilling, intriguing, and altogether deft exposition of the domestic life of a middle-aged college professor who finds his world cracking beneath the strain of a deluge of unsought revelations. Marshall Lockard is going through something a good deal worse than your ordinary midlife crisis. An English professor at a rather woebegone little college in New England, he plods through his coursework, hardly enthusiastic but too cynical to be disillusioned. Meanwhile, his wife, Sonja, is involved in a loveless affair with her boss; his stepmother is dying; and one of his students has flabbergasted him by telling him dreadful things about a colleague. Haplessly, Marshall allows himself to be drawn into a very tangled web of rape, perversion, pathological lies, obsession, and mental illness, in which no point of view is reliable, and truth itself seems to exist only as a rather callous metaphor: ""Literature was the study of Them by Us. It was undertaken by people smart enough to make a microscope of the page--or, more fashionably, to assert that things could shake out any number of ways because the page was a kaleidoscope."" The investigation that Marshall takes on at his student's instigation succeeds in discovering unimagined secrets at just about every remove of his own life, and he takes to the road--comically enough, to Florida during spring break--in an attempt to settle the mysteries of his own childhood. Through all of this, Beattie manages to keep the metaphorical elements here grounded in a narrative at once compelling and disturbing, and she broadens the perspective immensely by juxtaposing the unhappy marriage of Marshall's father--as revealed in old love letters interleaved throughout the text--with the spectacle of Marshall and Sonja trying to make a success of their own married life. Vivid, rich, and utterly real: this time, Beattie has fitted her voice to her subject perfectly, and shaped her subject without flaw. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
