| From Publishers Weekly After 10 years in London copyediting porn novels， a weary 32-year-old American returns to her Ohio hometown in Dalton's breezy first novel. All the important plot elements are revealed in the first few pages of the snappily paced first-person narrative: Merle Winslow has left her strange， sexual role-playing English boyfriend， Terence， and her vaguely sketched life back in England to come home to the truncated family outside of Cleveland that she had fled a decade before. Merle's father， widowed after her alcoholic mother died with her lover in a car accident when Merle was 12， plans to marry again， while Merle's younger single brother， Olin， is floundering in his career after an early windfall invention (a Marilyn Monroe barbecue thermometer). The drama of their parents' swift Oklahoma courtship and marriage still haunts Merle， as does the 1970 student bombing of a local Ohio college building; her mother had been photographed there (while pushing Merle in a stroller) and consequently labeled a subversive. Merle claims she has returned because she is "tired of being alone in the world，" but she and her family and friends don't seem to have missed each other much-or to be able to express it if they did. Merle is a plucky， chin-up character who wittily tempers her self-pity， yet the novel relies too much on small exchanges， the narrative pinched within the limited scope that short story writer Dalton allows it. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information， Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From Booklist Merle left her Ohio hometown more than 10 years ago and hasn't been back. But now she's fed up with her job as an editor for a London porn publisher and with her longtime boyfriend， whose suggestion that they take a trip on a "swinging ferry" (a ferry trip on which couples swap partners， not a boat that sways) was the last straw. She heads back to Ohio to face her past and reconnect with her father， brother， and grandmother， while trying to make sense of the death of her alcoholic mother when Merle was 13， as well as her mother's social ostracization for having been a friend of someone who helped set off a bomb to protest the Vietnam War. Dalton juxtaposes the contemporary narrative against the story of how Merle's parents married after knowing each other only two days. These flashbacks help reveal some of the reasons for the unraveling of the family and help us understand Merle's quest to make peace with her past. A quietly moving debut novel. Beth LeistensniderCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. See all Editorial Reviews |
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