Johnston, who has sent us some of the finest recent fiction on
growing-up-in-violent-Ireland (Shadows on Our Skin, The Old Jest),
is up to something quite different here - in a small, spare novel
that uses perfect detail and disarming, plain-edged prose to
transcend its rather familiar outline. Constance Keating, 45, is
dying of leukemia; she got the bad news in London, just after
giving birth to a baby girl (result of virgin Constance's. first
affair, in Italy, with Polish/Jewish/British writer Jacob
Weinberg); so now she has come back to the deserted family house in
Dublin - turning baby Anna over to sister Bibi but refusing to go
to the hospital for treatment. And, as death and Christmas approach
more or less together, narrator Constance - visited by Bibi and
doctor/old-flame Bill, tended by convent-reared orphan Bridie -
remembers (in the third person) pieces of her taut, empty life: her
adolescent refusal to join Bibi in the upper-middle-class social
swing (all those "old, old young men"); her rejection of Bill's
proposal ("Me heap big trouble," she advised him); dropping-out of
university, leaving for London with literary ambitions - but
quickly settling for a risk-less, pain-less life as an unattached
ad-agency copywriter; and then the brief encounter with older,
earthy Jacob, a Holocaust survivor with broken hands, a big nose,
and unpossessive tenderness. All this, then - the
flashbacks-while-dying, the desire to have a strong, honest death
after a weak, fretful life - is far from original. But Johnston
invests every predictable moment here with fresh, true, crisp
coloration: the relationship with young servant Bridle (who's
timidly reveling in her first days out of the convent) is
especially irresistible - as is Constance's series of
confrontations with the ghost of her disapproving mother. . . who
hasn't changed a bit "with several years of death." And, when
Constance very quietly dies and Bridle takes over the story - Jacob
Weinberg's appearance at Constance's deathbed, his claiming of the
baby and Bridie - a sad, pinched tale strangely blossoms into
something warm and joyous. From start to finish: an impeccable
piece of realistic fiction, with routine material transcended by
art at its most clear-eyed and unpretentious. (Kirkus Reviews)
Constance Keating has lived a life of internal exile, alienated
from her family and from Ireland. Now she has returned to her
family home to die. While that painful, messy process takes place
she replays, like a home movie, the fragments of her past. And, as
the festooned Christmas tree awaits its day, so Constance also
waits, hoping her child's father will come and that the final
outcome will be on her terms.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
