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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
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Summary
Summary
Assured, funny, and provocative, this novel from the author of Bury Me Standing is unflinching in its depiction of desire, of the responsibility that comes with age and family, and of the impulses that color and disrupt lives even as they reveal the true nature of love.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In a compelling fiction debut, Fonseca takes syndicated health columnist Jean Hubbard, an Oxford-trained lawyer, through a dramatic demonstration of the limits of attachment. Jean is filing her columns from the remote Indian Ocean island of St. Jacques, where her advertising-genius husband, Mark, has moved them. Their time there is disrupted when Jean intercepts a salacious letter from Mark's London office, which leads her in turn to an e-mail signed by a lubricious "Giovana" (Jean immediately notices the odd single n). The e-mail features explicit attachments, and without reflecting on the consequences, Jean, writing as Mark, begins an e-mail correspondence with Giovana. Ensuing events occur in a beautifully orchestrated dramatic arc, drawing in Mark's unscrupulous business partner; Jean's stricken father in New York; Mark's first love's daughter; Jean's former beau; and the secret that pushes the 23-year marriage further toward the precipice. Fonseca's nonfiction Bury Me Standing drew a vivid portrait of the international Gypsy community, and she shifts locales and emotional registers with evocative ease here, delving deeply into her ensemble's motivations. She's as unsparing of their flaws as she is frank about their desires. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
The nature of attachment--or, more accurately, detachment from self, spouse, career, and family--forms the skeleton of this meditative first novel from Fonseca (Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey). Meandering and thoughtful, the book is divided into three sections and moves among a lush tropical island, London, and a bustling Manhattan gripped by post-9/11 edginess. The tale revolves around Jean and Mark Hubbard, a long-married couple on sabbatical in picturesque St. Jacques. When Jean inadvertently intercepts an email meant for her husband, the contents send her reeling. Is he having an affair? How long has it been going on? And why? As Jean begins sleuthing, she undertakes numerous deceptions that force her to access how she feels about commitment, monogamy, and revenge. Along the way, issues of female aging come to the fore, even as the need to care for elderly parents smacks head-on into letting go of a college-aged child bursting for independence. Intense and realistic, full of sexual imagery and churning emotion, this work is highly recommended for all fiction collections.--Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.