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Donna Morrissey Downhill Chance
Sceptre 0143033603 / 9780143033608 PAPERBACK Very Good
0143033603 From Publishers Weekly nMorrissey's sprawling second novel (after Kit's Law) once again takes readers to a fishing community on the coast of Newfoundland. There, life for the Gale family is disrupted when father Job Gale decides to enlist as a soldier in WWII. His eldest daughter, Clair, still a girl, takes on the tasks he left behind, caring for her younger sister, Missy, and her mother, Sare, who is undone by Job's absence. Things don't get much easier when Job returns, discharged after a shrapnel injury. He is shell-shocked, depressed and prone to fits. These events are told from the point of view of Clair, who becomes a teacher and marries the son of another local family, Luke Osmond. Woven in with the Gales' story is that of the O'Maras, Irish immigrants who wash ashore after a shipwreck. The second half of the novel shifts to the point of view of Hannah, Clair's daughter, who describes the scandal that Missy causes when she becomes pregnant out of wedlock, as well as the revelations about Job's military service that emerge after his death. With vivid imagery and a fantastic ear for dialect, Morrissey breathes life into the small harbor town, where gossiping neighbors and eccentrics are a small price to pay for the comforts of living in a place where everyone knows one another. The novel is overstuffed with plot turns and family melodrama, but Morrissey keeps the story moving at a pleasant clip; readers may lose track of subplots, but they won't be bored. nCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition. n nFrom Booklist n*Starred Review* In this superb successor to her acclaimed first novel, Kit's Law (2001), Morrissey returns to the insular world of Newfoundland's remote fishing villages. The story begins during World War II, when Job Gale enlists in the army. That decision has far-reaching ramifications, not only for Job but also for his wife, Sare, and his daughters, Clare and Missy. It is primarily through Clare's eyes that we see life during and after the war, as old secrets and fresh wounds drive the inhabitants of the Basin and Rocky Head, a nearby outport where Clare eventually takes a job as a teacher, marries, and gives birth to a daughter as headstrong as herself. A palpably Faulknerian sense of the past (The past is never dead; it's not even past) influences every action Clare and those around her take (or fail to take). This is an often heartbreaking, ineffably sad story of constricted lives, bent by bitterness and twisted by dreaming the wrong dreams. At the same time, however, it is an achingly beautiful novel, and Clare is an unforgettable heroine--courageous, passionate, determined to recover the unrecoverable, yet able to recognize her own wrongheadedness. Morrissey is capable of bursts of lush, melodic prose, but she never gets caught up in her own eloquence. She has a comic touch, too, even in the midst of great sadness. And, best of all, her sense of place is overpowering--not just the natural beauty of remote Nefoundland but also the almost suffocating intimacy of outport life. A major novel by a remarkable writer. Bill Ott nCopyright ? American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Price:
4.84 EUR
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