Review by Booklist Review
Although her novel reads like a series of stories based on three generations of women rather than a seamless narrative, Morris invokes a sequence of memories and images that stick in the reader's mind with stunning power. Zoe, a young medical researcher, has returned to her home to visit her brother, who is lying in the hospital in a drug-induced stupor. This experience reopens not only Zoe's past but that of her mother and grandmother, the text exploring how similarly the three women face the cold realities that have conditioned their lives. Although the transitions from one character's viewpoint to another are a bit self-consciously executed, these intertwining tales reveal a common ground in both attitudes and values. Morris is also the author of Vanishing Animals and Other Stories [BKL D 1 79] and Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone [BKL Ap 1 88]. --John Brosnahan
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Morris's last three titles ( Crossroads ; The Bus of Dreams ; the nonfiction Nothing to Declare ) reveal a taste for journeys, actual and symbolic. This sagely provocative novel opens with Zoe Coleman returning by train to her Midwest home in response to an urgent summons from the clinic where her drug-ruined brother Badger is institutionalized. On the trip, Zoe recognizes that she's ``in love with distance. With trips across great continents and travel to the moon.'' But like the other women of the novel, Zoe is forced to idle in antechambers, bars and corridors, waiting for men to come back or just to notice them. A dermatologist, Zoe comprehends the body scientifically, while hungering for some stable physical intimacy. Much of the novel reaches into the past to delineate three generations of women: Naomi, Zoe's Russian immigrant grandmother cheated of her only love; June, her mother, whose husband Cal went to WW II a young, strong photographer and came back a stranger; Zoe herself, whose lover Hunt died in another war. A highly accomplished storyteller, Morris captures with humor and perspicacity the complex ways of women with men and with each other. BOMC and QPBC New Voice selections. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Morris's novel opens as Zoe returns to her hometown by train to visit her brother, hospitalized for apparently drug-related mental problems. Her initial, uneasy meeting with her mother is a point of departure for the family history that Morris provides in satisfying detail: grandmother Naomi fled the pogroms of Russia only to lose her beloved first husband to an absurd death on their wedding day; mother June married for love but lost her husband to the despair he experienced after returning from World War II. Though these characters are well drawn, and their relationships intriguing, the language is not quite vivid enough to bring the novel to life. Still, there are gratifying moments, for Morris deals forthrightly with issues of quiet signficance, testing one family's delicate balance of love and misunderstanding as she goes.-- Barbara Hoffert, ``Library Journal'' (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
Three generations of midwestern women deal with the loss of idyllic first love; in her second novel, Morris (Vanishing Animals, 1979; Crossroads, 1982; Nothing to Declare, 1988) dips erratically into the past, and comes up empty-handed. It's 1973, or thereabouts; 30-ish Zoe Coleman is returning to her hometown of Brewerton, Wisconsin, to see her younger brother Badger, a draft-dodger, now back from Canada; Badger is in a clinic, apparently insane after too many bad drug trips. Zoe and June, her mother, visit Badger a few times; later they travel to Florida to interview Badger's traveling-companion in Canada; at the end, Zoe falls (too easily) in love with Badger's shrink, while Badger's condition remains unchanged. These interactions pale beside the violent melodrama of the past. We learn that Zoe's grandmother Naomi left Russia at 15 to avoid the pogroms; that her husband, a fellow-exile, was shot to death on their wedding day; that she later married a motel-owner; that her daughter June saw her half-brother fall to his death through a window; that June then married his best friend Cal, a photographer, survivor of a gruesome train-crash that killed both his parents; that after three wonderful years, Cal went off to WW II and returned a broken man, secure only in his darkroom; that June innocently sought comfort from Cal's generous-hearted friend Sam; that ten-year-old Zoe spied on them, and made this the big secret of her life; that Zoe too lost her young lover to war, this time Vietnam. The reader searches in vain for a point of entry into this family of sad women and even sadder, nonfunctioning men. The problem is that the past is delivered in long, petrified stretches of synopsis, while the present is just vapid (Zoe's revelation to her mother of her 20-year-old secret is pure bathos). Morris has yet to show the mastery of the novel that she has demonstrated over the memoir and short story. 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
