Literary aspiration can't save this British novel from maudlin
domestic melodrama.Though McGregor earned a Booker Prize nomination
for his debut (If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, 2003), his
sophomore work fails to distinguish itself. The major interest here
is formalistic, as the narrative cuts back and forth across the
decades in the same way that memory might. Memory, secrets,
identity and blood ties are the chief concerns, though McGregor
doesn't have much that's fresh to say about any of them. A prologue
finds a young Irish girl sent to England to serve as a housemaid,
where doing the family's bidding results in her pregnancy. She
keeps her condition a secret, gives the baby away and goes on with
her life. The novel then turns its attention to Eleanor and David
Carter, many decades later, before delving into their courtship and
individual family histories. David, who comes from a comparatively
happy family, has an inordinate boyhood fascination with museums
and collecting artifacts, as if connecting with the past can
illuminate the present. Since David is the story's protagonist, the
reader senses some irony here-he must be the baby who'd been given
away, and who apparently has no idea of his own familial history.
As David fulfills his ambition to become a curator, neither his
parents nor his sister mention anything about adoption, and when
the secret comes out (from Aunt Julia, who isn't really his aunt),
David is shocked. He falls into marriage with Eleanor, who knows
very well who her parents are, but has suffered from an abusive
relationship with her mother and the failure of her father to
protect her. David and Eleanor start a family of their own, Eleanor
succumbs to depression, David considers an affair, parents on each
side die, David makes it his life's mission to find his "real"
mother.With its plot contrivances and drably conventional
characters, this novel never comes alive on the page. (Kirkus
Reviews)
David Carter cannot help but wish for more: that his wife Eleanor
would be the sparkling girl he once found so irresistible; that his
job as a museum curator could live up to the promise it once held;
that his daughter's arrival could have brought him closer to
Eleanor. But a few careless words spoken by his mother's friend
have left David restless with the knowledge that his whole life has
been constructed around a lie.
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