编辑推荐ReviewA poetic gaze over a long weekend in the lives of the people of Featherstone - a small attractive rural town. A novel about memory and need, forgetting and faith but above all it gives an insight into the ways we deceive and believe in one another. In this dark and powerful novel by the author of Rain, Featherstone, a quintessentially ordinary English village centred around its pub, is rent apart by the return of one of its lost daughters, Francie Johanssen. Over the course of one weekend, her mysterious presence, whether real or imagined, we are never quite sure, seems to envelop the villagers like a damp mist, re-kindling old desires and re-awakening old memories. The characters are immediately recognizable symbols of parochial life: the minister and his wife; the publican; Ray, the son of a wealthy landowner who has never grown up enough to flee the nest; and the brash teenager, desperate to escape and make her fortune as a model. But all of these characters have hidden depths which slowly reveal themselves under the intense gaze of Francie, as she insinuates herself into their very souls. The minister and his wife recognize their marriage for the sham that it is; the publican is forced to confront her loneliness and sexual yearnings; and Ray's unswerving devotion to Francie, the love of his life, finally comes to a head. By confining the action to one weekend within the village boundaries, Gunn draws us into her sultry and shifting world of unrequited love and unmet desires. With a beautiful poetic style, she creates a feeling of oppressiveness, of calm preceding a storm, which weighs as heavily on the reader as on her characters. And it is this storm, an act of unimaginable and yet somehow expected violence, which clears the air, allowing fresh seeds of hope to sprout as old relationships are re-evaluated and new ones forged. (Kirkus UK) An amorphous and depressing account of a young woman's disappearance and the anguish suffered by her friends and relatives, told in an oblique style that generates much heat but little light. The New Zealand-born Gunn (The Place You Return to Is Home, 1999, etc.) sets her third novel in Scotland, in a creepy, backwoods town called Featherstone. Far removed from anywhere of significance, it's basically a crossroads dominated by the Railton Hotel, whose bar serves as the town's spiritual center. The Railton is run by Margaret Farley, a lonely middle-aged floozie who usually picks one of her customers at the end of the evening to take upstairs for the night. One of her employees is Renee Anderson, whose teenaged daughter Mary Susan is eventually raped by local boy Ray Weldon. Ray is still carrying a torch for his old girlfriend Francie, who disappeared mysteriously some years before. Francie haunts the town, both literally and figuratively-her uncle Sonny Johanssen looks up in his garden one day and sees her (or, rather, perceives her, since it's far from clear that she's actually there) smiling at him benignly, and Ray Weldon also comes to the conclusion (on the same day) that Francie has returned. He wanders the streets of town, looking into all of the places he and Francie spent time in as he recalls how he fell in love with her years before. Meanwhile, Reverend Harland is going through a bad patch with his unhappy wife Katie, who is tired of him and of life in general. The Reverend is pretty depressed, too, having to deal with the aftermath of Mary Susan's rape and still compose a sermon for Sunday. Francie never materializes by story's end, but by that time we can understand her reluctance to return. Featherstone is a good place to keep away from. A mangled plot and leaden prose sink a tale that begins well in a quasi-Gothic mode but then becomes pretentious and unintelligible. (Kirkus Reviews) |
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