Review by Booklist Review
Driscoll's first novel was awarded Pushcart's Seventeenth Annual Editors' Book Award and deservedly so. It is an accomplished, intelligent, and believable tale about lives and marriages in jeopardy. Perry, a Michigan man still haunted by his kid sister's drowning, is quieter and less demonstrative than his beautiful wife, Marcia, a native of Mystic, the pretty Massachusetts seaside town in which they live. She has the happy job of teaching second grade, while he confronts the darker side of life as a parole officer. Now in their late thirties, they find themselves at odds over Marcia's struggle to overcome her infertility. Perry dutifully administers her injections and makes love on command, but he is actually ambivalent about fatherhood and feels increasingly out of control. He very nearly drowns their nephew and himself in a jet ski accident and becomes altogether too involved in the troubles of one of his parolees, but he and Marcia are good navigators, motivated by love, and they manage to hold their course. Driscoll's characters have substance, their predicaments arouse empathy, and his prose is as finely crafted as it is merciful. --Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
It's barely summer in the seaside community of Mystic, Conn., and Perry Lafond, the restive, 38-year-old hero of Driscoll's searing first novelrecipient of the 17th annual Pushcart Press Editor's Book Awardis facing "the worst funk of his life." Chafing at the confines of both his childless 15-year marriage to Marcia, who's now enduring a grueling regimen of fertility injections, and his job as a probation officer, for which he long ago gave up a career as a teacher, Perry has begun flirting with a second adolescence. He's taking his Harley on late-night rides, rereading Nieztche and testing the affections of two actual mothersMarcia's twin sister, Pauline, who's navigating her own divorce, and Angela, the wife of Roland, an irascible trailer-park parolee. Still haunted by nightmares of his sister, who drowned at age five on the grounds of his parent's cherry orchard, Perry is thrown into an emotional free fall after causing a jet ski accident involving his young nephew, and by news that his mother has had a second stroke, prompting a grim visit to his family estate in Northern Michigan where little has changed since his sister's death. Driscoll writes with an elegiacal kitchen-sink realism so suffused with detail that every nuance of the recriminating conversations, fraught silences and introspective fugues of Perry and Marcia is spun out at ponderous length. Yet there's also a cinematic fluidity to certain scenes, as when Perry returns from Michigan to a fiery showdown with Roland and a trial separation from Marcia, which leads to a stint of lobster fishing with his friend, Wayne, an itinerant Vietnam vetand the first signs of catharsis. The story will resonate with readers, however, for what finally emerges, from both the high drama of reckless accidents and the slow burn of Perry's midlife depression, is a powerful portrait of a marriage holding its own against the weight of difficult past and a still more difficult present. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This accomplished and thoroughly engaging first novel recently received the 17th Annual Pushcart Press Editors' Book Award. Perry Lafond, the protagonist, is an almost-40-year-old probation officer whose work and personal life have become problematic. His daily responsibilities on the job have left him weary and dispirited, and a sense of loneliness has crept into his marriage, even though his wife, Marcia, is kind, loving, and beautiful. During the course of the novel, which is essentially about this marriage, Lafond makes all manner of mistakes and misjudgments. Most significantly, he becomes involved with the wife of one of his parolees. Lafond is a lucky man, however, and with great skill and intelligence, Driscoll traces his journey out of his treacherous personal crisis to a sweet and dramatic reconciliation with Marcia. Driscoll writes poignantly about doubt, hope, and forgiveness. Recommended for both public and academic libraries.Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community-Technical Coll., Canterbury, CT (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
Marriage under siege is the somewhat one-sided theme of poet and short-fiction writer Driscoll's poignant first novel, winning him Pushcart's Editors' Book Award. Perry and his wife Marcia have been trying for years to have a child, and now panics setting in as they approach 40. But the more Marcia frets, the more ambivalent Perry feels. When in the course of his job as a Mystic, Connecticut, parole officer he meets Angela, wife of smart but impulsive check-forger Roland, he has trouble keeping his hands to himself. Angela is just pregnant with child number two; she and Roland are struggling to make ends meet for the sake of their firstborn, who's not even a year old. Even so, she's drawn to Perry, who seems to represent everything her husband doesnt. Unlike Perry, however, Angela knows where to draw the line between fantasy and reality, leaving him remorseful enough about his desires to find Roland a job and a chance to get two feet back under him. Marcia senses her spouse slipping away, especially when he takes their nephew out on the Jetski in rough weather, nearly drowns himself, then almost bleeds to death from a cut incurred while breaking into their apartment. So she moves out to let him think things overwhile Roland, already tense about his growing family, does the wrong thing in a job-site confrontation and decides to skip town. Once again, Perrys involved, trusted by both Angela and Roland, but his assistance brings them only tragedy, while also opening a serious rift between him and Marcia. Visceral stuff, with richly detailed scenes of life on both sides of the tracks. The husbands, though, achieve significantly more substance than their wives, and some of the plotting, especially involving Perry's family back in Michigan, seems digressive.
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
