The Other Side of the Fire

With this opening, which firmly establishes the wry tone of this delicious comedy/satire, Alice Thomas Ellis instantly draws the reader into a hilarious send-up of the Greek legend of Phaedra, while simultaneously poking fun at the lives of would-be writers. Claudia Bohannon, who has spent her life being the perfect English housewife, suddenly finds herself inexplicably drawn to her handsome stepson Philip, who looks and sounds like a younger version of his father but who is far more sensitive of her feelings. Convincing herself that she is desperately in love with him and that he is hiding his feelings out of respect for her and his father, Claudia sets in motion a domestic comedy which gives a new meaning to the word "irony." Her best friend Sylvie, to whom she confesses that she is in love (but not with whom), becomes the sounding board for both Claudia and her husband Charles. At the same time, Sylvie's daughter Evvie, Claudia's god-daughter, decides to write a romance novel about the lives of the people in the small town where they all live. Every trite character and plot twist and every possible cliché of writing finds its way into Evvie's novel, which unfolds simultaneously with the love story of Claudia, adding literary humor to the dramatic ironies within Ellis's novel. As Evvie further develops her thinly disguised characters, her manipulations of the lives of the characters within Ellis's novel, for the sake of her own novel, add further complications and ironies. The novel is not simply a farce, however. The parallels Ellis draws between the story of Claudia and Philip and that of Phaedra and Hippolyte, expand the focus of the novel and add to its ironies as she explores all aspects of love, questioning how much free will people have in matters of love, the connections between passion and love, and the amount of control individuals have when in the grip of love/passion. As various characters dream about the future, she raises peripheral questions about life and death, with the ultra-realistic Sylvie ultimately declaring that "a sojourn in the flames of purgatory" is necessary to "bring you out cleansed, on the other side of the fire." Lively dialogue, filled with wit, adds to the absurdity of many scenes, while Ellis's restrained cynicism keeps the characters from being "cute." Tightly constructed and filled with wonderful observations (so appropriate for the action that they sometimes feel like "throw-aways"), this novel will delight those who are already Ellis fans and will make fans of new readers. (4.5 stars) n Mary Whipple

A hoot in invoking a contemporary replay of the Phaedra, er, difficulties. But, rather than gloom and doom, there's wit and cynical delight and an exploration of sexual identies. Finest kind.