Heat wave /

World's End, a pair of cottages nestled within the "green pelt" of wheat fields, seems idyllic, the epitome of timelessness and the simple pleasures of the English countryside, but nothing is ever simple or peaceful in a Lively novel. No, these two seemingly placid, old-fashioned homes are buzzing with the electricity of appliances and the static of troubled minds. Pauline lives in one of the houses. A well-respected book editor, she is working on a pseudo-medieval novel about "unswerving, irresistible romantic love" and is rather unsettled by having to ponder what is, for her, a sore subject. Even though she divorced her serially unfaithful husband years ago, she's never gotten over the pain. Now she fears that her daughter, Teresa, who lives next door with her arrogant author-husband, Maurice, and their young son, is about to experience the same emotional agony. As the lush fecundity of early summer shrivels and browns under the sun's unusually fierce gaze, Maurice and Teresa's marriage does indeed buckle under the heat of his illicit affair and her rage. The tension mounts as temperatures rise, but Lively keeps cool as she leads us to a surprise denouement--her impeccable prose delectably restrained, her humor neat and vicious, and her articulation of emotional states keen and vivifying. (Reviewed Aug. 1996)0060174765Donna Seaman

Lively (Moon Tiger) considers the bliss of romantic love, and its frequently tragic disillusionment, in her 11th satisfying novel, which provides further evidence of her ability to build a fascinating plot from minutely observed character. Ensconced in World's End, her summer cottage in England's rural midlands, Pauline Carter, 55, is copyediting an allegory of romantic love while trying not to observe that the seemingly idyllic marriage of her daughter, Teresa, to ambitious professor/writer Maurice, is treading rough water. Trusting, vulnerable Teresa and her baby son share the premises with her mother, while charming Maurice comes and goes. Pauline soon realizes that he is involved in an affair with his editor's girlfriend, conducted when the couple visits World's End on weekends and during Maurice's sudden, unexplained midweek trips to London. To Pauline, the situation carries the echoes of her own betrayal by Teresa's father, Harry, also in his time an unscrupulous professor/lover on the make. Remembering the wasted years of her life before she had the courage to divorce Harry, Pauline is terrified that Teresa is doomed to repeat her history. Events in the novel's last few pages prove otherwise, adding a final shock to the steadily mounting, clearly foreshadowed tension. Lively is most interested in the difference between appearance and reality‘between the apparently tranquil countryside and nature's casual mayhem, between the exterior of the stone cottage and its state-of-the-art interior technology, between Maurice's beguiling reassurances and his cynical adultery. Acutely aware of ironies and misperceptions, she is also a master of descriptive detail, evoking the landscape with techniques akin to an Impressionist painter's. Most importantly, she creates a convincing picture of obsessive sexual love tainted by jealousy and misery, and of the kind of maternal love that carries its own implacable mandates. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Pauline is spending the summer at her restored English country home, World's End. During restoration, two homes are created from three. Her daughter, Teresa, son-in-law Maurice, and grandson Luke occupy the attached cottage. Pauline edits the books of others while Maurice writes one on travel. James, his editor, and his wife, Carol, are frequent visitors at World's End. Soon Pauline suspects an affair between Carol and Maurice, which brings back memories of her own disastrous marriage to Teresa's unfaithful father. Pauline feels Teresa's pain but is unsure how much she is projecting from her own history. Lively explores the strength of the mother-daughter bond in her subtle, ironic style, and it is successfully conveyed here. Davina Porter is the obvious and correct choice as narrator. A first-class production.‘Terrill Persky, Woodbridge P.L., Naperville, Ill. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A heavier touch than Booker-winner Lively's last novel (Cleopatra's Sister, 1993) is in evidence here, as a mother watches her daughter's marriage to a philanderer founder just as her own did--until summer's oppressive heat fashions a more decisive end. At World's End, her clutch of restored cottages in rural England, freelance editor Pauline has settled in for the warmer months with daughter Teresa, Teresa's writer husband Maurice, and the couple's toddler Luke. As Pauline edits a romantic fantasy complete with unicorns, Maurice, already marked as a rising star among the literati, struggles with an exposé about the myths concerning country life, work in which he is aided by his own editor, who visits from London on weekends with his girlfriend. Teresa is too absorbed with Luke and infatuated with Maurice to notice, but Pauline can't help but see her son-in-law's attention wander to the girlfriend--and is reminded unpleasantly of Teresa's father, an academic whose countless liaisons and callous indifference to Pauline's feelings ultimately drove them apart. Maurice begins to visit London frequently ``for research,'' and by the time Pauline chances to see him holding the other woman's hands at World's End when his wife is out of the room, even Teresa has begun to suspect. Having experienced the jealousy and welter of feelings associated with such a betrayal, Pauline wants to protect her daughter but can't speak of the matter because Teresa will not. Meanwhile, she grows increasingly hostile to Maurice, and matters come to a head when a crop-killing heat wave breaks into a colossal thunderstorm, knocking out the power and bringing Maurice to Pauline's cottage for a fateful encounter. While the denouement proves surprisingly clichéd, emotional nuances are unerringly precise, creating a full-bodied, often elegant portrayal of a fragile family dynamic forever altered by adultery. (Author tour)