The
Truth of the Matter
by Robb Forman Dew
Robb Forman Dew is a masterful writer and gives a demanding story to this woman and her
family. This is a compelling story, and although I have not had the pleasure of reading
the predecessor to this book, The Evidence Against Her, and so had to go on what
I could to put the story together, I found it a total immersion and wanted to know the
other story so that it would make better sense of the things to follow. But that being
stated, I did find the book to be interesting enough to the end on its own.
In The Truth of the Matter, Agnes is a somewhat repressed, emotionless person
who has been thrust into circumstances she didn't want or ever think about having to shoulder
all by herself, so she puts up a wall to hold her feelings in check and under control at
all times. Much like many women of that time period may have done, because women of
that time were more chattels than human beings and society put those mores on them 'for
their own safety'. With the war effort and more women starting to grow and work outside
the home than ever before, those same women started coming alive and feeling like they
had rights to many of the same emotions that men had taken for granted for so many years.
Agnes began the process slowly and with lots of consternation and effort, but finally
became the sensual woman she always knew deep inside that she was. Her family grows and
she again becomes the caretaker in many respects, and has to repress herself somewhat
again, and against her will this time. Life goes forward and the truth of the stories
eventually comes out and Agnes finds herself again freed to live her independence, though
many don't think that she should. This book is full of tension, truths and lies, and
the determination to live in the present with the past ever rearing its head to be patted
back down into that pillow of past intensities.
It would be more than a bit helpful to the new reader of Dew if they got The Evidence
Against Her to read before going into this book, just so that they would know the
characters and the roles beforehand and not have to make them up as they read. |
The Book |
Little, Brown and Company, New York, Boston |
November 2005 |
Hardcover |
0-316-89004-9 |
Fiction |
More
at Amazon.com |
Excerpt |
NOTE: 2nd in a series of small town life immediately after WWII.
Dew has won the National Book Award for The Time of Her Life, Fortunate Lives,
and The Evidence Against Her (which is the predecessor to this book).
|
The Reviewer |
Claudia VanLydegraf |
Reviewed 2006 |
NOTE: |
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