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Stella Duffy State of Happiness
Virago 1844080234 / 9781844080236 PAPERBACK Fine
1844080234 Editorial Reviews n nFrom Publishers Weekly nA cartographer with a taste for theories of place succumbs to cancer in this metaphorical tale of mortality and mapmaking. New Zealander Duffy's eighth novel (her first to be published in the U.S.) begins when Cindy Frier, author of a popular treatise on maps called Dis-location, meets Jack Stratton, a successful British news producer, at a party in New York City. Shortly after they become a couple, Jack receives a career-making promotion that takes him and Cindy to the beachy environs of Los Angeles. At this point, a third character enters the story: Cindy's cancer. Duffy strives hard for a distinctive narrative voice, veering from lyricism to purposefully stilted bluntness, with mixed results (on the progress of the couple's relationship: "Cindy and Jack thought that change, in the form of Jack and Cindy, looked pretty good"). But when the novel turns into a chronicle of Cindy's rapid decline, Duffy's tone steadies. Romance provides relief from the litany of treatments and side-effects, as do original ideas about the way illness insidiously etches its own map on our lives and bodies. The tale's tragic ending is telegraphed well in advance, but it's the path taken that counts in this artful if rather self-conscious novel. nCopyright ? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. n nFrom Booklist nConvention dictates that romances have happy endings. The tragic ending of Duffy's modern love story is only one way it balks at convention. Cindy and Jack are focused as much on their careers as on their relationship. She, a successful cartographer and author, and he, a driven television journalist, squeeze one another into their busy schedules when they can. But when Jack takes a job in L.A., Cindy follows, then has little time to warm to California before she finds the lump that will irrevocably change their lives. Duffy successfully articulates both characters' voices. She also intersperses Cindy's lectures on mapmaking, and describes maps as "images as leaps of faith," as she captures the complex emotions brought on by terminal illness. This is the first of the New Zealand author's novels to be published in America, and readers here will surely appreciate Duffy's elegant and intelligent prose, which speaks to both their minds and hearts. Aleksandra Kostovski nCopyright ? American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Price:
4.84 EUR
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