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Publisher:
New American Library Fiction |
Release
Date: March 2, 2004 |
ISBN:
0-451-21160-X |
Awards:
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Format
Reviewed: Trade Paperback |
Buy
it at Amazon |
Read
an Excerpt |
Genre:
Fiction and Literature - Contemporary - Chick Lit |
Reviewed:
2004 |
Reviewer:
Kristin Johnson |
Reviewer
Notes: Reviewer Kristin Johnson is the author of
CHRISTMAS COOKIES ARE FOR GIVING, co-written with Mimi Cummins
and ORDINARY MIRACLES: My Incredible Spiritual, Artistic and
Scientific Journey, co-written with Sir Rupert A.L. Perrin,
M.D. |
Copyright
MyShelf.com |
|
Digging
Out
By Katherine Leiner
Alys Davies'
soul became buried under tons of coal in a Welsh Three Mile Island-type
disaster, a historical event rendered brilliantly in Katherine Leiner's
debut novel of love, loss, and going home again.
Not unlike
the hero of "Big Fish," Alys only goes home when her father
is on his deathbed. However, unlike the fantastical, trippy forgiving
atmosphere of "Big Fish," Alys' homecoming and reunion
is complex because of the real layers of her life that she must
penetrate. Her return to her Welsh hometown of Aberfan follows on
the heels of her husband Marc's death and her discovery that he
has an illegitimate daughter by a sensual Brazilian named Gabriella
("My goodness, you're so little. You American women"-a
misnomer because Alys is Welsh-"is always so concerned about
your weight, no? Why do you all want to be so skinny? No breasts!")
Nevertheless, her future is hardly more certain than her past. She
must face Evan, the man she abandoned for the United States, and
confront at last the complex web of family, duty, love, loyalty,
and shame.
It's no easy
task, and Alys seems to have lived a life of denial, at least in
pop psychology terms. But the grieving that she experiences over
the tearing apart of her family eventually surfaces, layer by layer
of loamy Welsh soil, until the hard coal of home truths becomes
a diamond of redemption. Leiner's prose sparkles with multiple facets,
and her characters are no less dimensional. Marc is not the much-maligned
cheating consign-him-to-perdition stale-as-cardboard token male
voodoo doll, any more than Evan is the gallant dreamy white knight.
Alys' crusading angry brother Parry reminds one of the brothers
in THE PRINCE OF TIDES, and her grandmother follows the fine tradition
of wise clan crones everywhere, the characters appear as themselves
and not as mannequins. Leiner gives them real heartbreak, woes,
doubts, anger, joy, and sorrow. In a sense, every character must
dig his or her way out of a suffocating grave, and each one finally
sees the light of day. Leiner's first book makes us thirsty for
more.
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