He Goes, She Goes

Ms. Torrey is a writer who can deconstruct a day's humble texture and, like a prospector panning for gold, come up with nuggets of insight and sparkling humor. In He Goes, She Goes, she draws the arc of her heroine, Alice, who, after the death of her father, is struggling to redefine her identity in the absence of his dominating influence. Remembering her abandoned passion for dance, she leaps from Paxil into the arms of Carlos and the restorative tropic beat of the Latin-Is-For-Lovers Dance Club. Her story is sensually lush, leavened with subtle, unexpected comedic riffs, and punctuated with turns of narrative as sudden and dramatic as a tango step. To read Ms. Torrey is to discover that prose has found a perfect dancing partner.

My father stepped out of my life when I was two, so I long ago made myself believe having or not having a father was unimportant. Then I read He Goes, She Goes and was reminded again of the value of a really good book; how it can open the reader's mind, can allow her (or him) to see and feel things long repressed. Alice, her sister and her mother must come to terms with losing a father and husband so private, that, in a sense, they never had him. It is a rare writer who can bring to life a character, such as this father -- stiff, unyielding, inhibited -- and evoke sympathy from the reader for both him and those who deserved but never received more from him.This particular book, for me, allowed me to accept and move beyond. That's the kind of book it is; a book that, through reading it, helps one to deal with one's own loss -- even when you don't know you've lost anything.