The Shadow of Desire

Rebecca Stowe is a wow of a writer and very funny. Her chief character, born at the end of the baby boom, is approaching middle age, the time when gray overcomes women. Ginger Moore was required to call her mother by her first name, Virginia. She has no children and likes the dead better than the living since they are complete. She is a biographer. She finds women who for some reason cannot act, do, Freud's hysterics and Dostoyevsky's screamers. The unproductive women who want their lives written about by Ginger are her neighbor, her friend, and her mother--all alcoholics. It is a sort of chicken and egg problem. Ginger's friend Michael call her a necrophiliac, feeding off the dead. He is a comic. She call her lawyer father, Poppy. Her brother decided to be a bum, she thinks, rather than a lawyer. He also seems stuck at age thirteen. The book has the form of semi-autobiography. It is a saga of an unhappy family, mother, father, son age forty one, and daughter age thirty eight, with alcoholism playing a large part. It is well-done and filled with humor. The family is trying to enact Christmas. There is a tradition family members follow of watching PSYCHO on Christmas Eve. The heroine ponders that the hallmark of a coward is regret and she wonders why women are so afraid. At another instance she thinks that perhaps people get stuck at that point in their lives where they think they are at their best. She believes the personalities of her mother and brother died at the same time, a period when a third child choked on a lego piece. Ginger discovers her friend Melanie has been on the wagon for ten months and is married to her ex-husband. She is a bagger at the supermarket, an ego-smashing undertaking. Ginger learns something from her brother that seems to make his life make sense. Almost too late she discerns some of the features of her mother's life, too. This is a wonderful book.

- - - As the book jacket says, 'closely observed.'This is the story of a young intellectual woman's return home from her happy, productive - if low key - life as an academic and biographer in New York City, to her colorfully dysfunctional family in a small town on the Canadian border, for Christmas holidays. The strength of the book is the author's unfailing ability to observe and report even the smallest of events, with an honesty and insight which is clarity itself. By turns laugh-out-loud funny, touching, and often thought provoking, it is an exploration of family, especially of the relationship between mothers and daughters; of establishing oneself in the world, and the ghosts we do - and do not - leave behind at home, to do it; of being a woman, succeeding at it, and perceiving oneself to be succeeding at it. This would be an excellent gift ............ It's not a lighthearted read, but worth the time for the insights, and for the well turned phrases. One of the very few books I've finished and then immediately re-read.

- - - This is the story of a young intellectual woman's return home from her happy, productive - if low key - life as an academic and biographer in New York City, to her colorfully dysfunctional family in a small town on the Canadian border, for Christmas holidays. The strength of the book is the author's unfailing ability to observe and report even the smallest of events, with an honesty and insight which is clarity itself. By turns laugh-out-loud funny, touching, and often thought provoking, it is an exploration of family, especially of the relationship between mothers and daughters; of establishing oneself in the world, and the ghosts we do - and do not - leave behind at home, to do it; of being a woman, succeeding at it, and perceiving oneself to be succeeding at it. This would be an excellent gift for the daughter of an alcoholic mother, or anyone who has dealt with family alcoholism. It's not a lighthearted read, but worth the time for the insights, and for the well turned phrases. One of the very few books I've finished and then immediately re-read.

This is a wry and understated book whose emotional power sneaks up on you. Stowe's prose is clean as a whistle, with not one false note. I love her sense of humor -- bone-dry, slightly twisted, wicked but never mean. She feels for her characters and makes you care just as much as she makes you laugh. If your family drives you insane (and whose doesn't?) this book is for you.

I'm really hoping to recommend this book to my Women's Book Group. Upon reading the synopsis, one might infer that this is just another dysfunctional family novel. The actual story-line is somewhat sparse and the "family mystery" unfolds slowly. I was _most_ impressed by Ms. Stowe's use of language...her descriptions and the carefully crafted introspections of the narrator make this book a very enjoyable and thoughtful read.