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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"I've got a father at last.",
By
This review is from: Dying Flames: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)
Robert Barnard's "Dying Flames" is a subtle psychological novel about a middle-aged novelist whose life takes a sudden and unexpected detour. Graham Broadbent is taken aback when one day, a beautiful nineteen-year-old girl named Christa knocks on his door and announces that she is his daughter. After "doing the maths," Graham realizes that there is no way that Christa's story can be true, but nevertheless, he is drawn into her dysfunctional family's soap opera. It turns out that a number of years before Christa was born, Graham had a brief affair with her mother, Peggy Somers. When he meets up with Peggy again, Graham soon learns that she is a deeply egotistical woman who manipulates and exploits everyone for her own gratification. What will happen to Peggy when someone tires of her schemes and selfishness?
Like other top-notch British writers, Barnard delves deeply into his character's psyches, exposing their motivations, strengths, and weaknesses. Graham has failed at marriage and has never wanted to be a parent. Yet, when he becomes reacquainted with Peggy, and learns that she has emotionally and physically left her children to fend for themselves, he discovers a caring side to himself that he never knew existed. Besides expertly analyzing personalities and relationships, the author skillfully explores the intersection of the past and present. How do our youthful experiences affect us later in life? Graham thinks back to his infatuation with the young Peggy, a girl so vibrant and talented that everyone who knew her loved her. Unfortunately, Peggy became spoiled and craved the limelight as she grew older, resorting to deceit to satisfy her needs. This is a melancholy novel about the incredible damage that a person with beauty, charm, and an unchecked ego can do to those in her orbit. It is also a touching look at an isolated man's tentative steps towards personal redemption.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
deep character story,
This review is from: Dying Flames: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)
In Colchester, nineteen years old Christa greets somewhat almost famous author Graham Broadbent by saying "hi dad". She insists that he sired her, but he claims he was overseas at the time she would have been conceived. He knew her mother Peggy, but swears he has no children by any woman, but Christa insists her mom has said for years he was her biological dad before she leaves, disappointed in his denial.
Unable to let it go, Graham visits Peggy, who he enjoyed a fling with two decades ago, but also knows she appreciated all men she met in the early 1980s. However, Peggy stuns Graham when she sweetly says that he indeed sired a child by her, just not Christa. Astonished and confused he wants to meet his son. Drama queen Peggy arranges a dinner for him, her other "dads" and their children to meet one another. At the hostile affair, no one knows who sired whom except perhaps Peggy. She is unable to because someone murdered her. The sharp sawed satire that has made Robert Barnard a popular author is less in your face than usual, but throughout the novel there is an ironic undercutting of the cast especially the lead protagonist. Mr. Barnard explores how an unanticipated incident can shake a person's demeanor forcing an abrupt change in the mask used to protect one from society intrusion as the former visage fails to shield anymore. Thus readers obtain a deep character story with a late murder mystery as Graham and the audience wonder who amidst the fathers and children killed the matriarch and more important does it really matter. Harriet Klausner
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A solid and strongly written mystery,
By
This review is from: Dying Flames: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)
The main character, Graham Broadbent, is a well-known author who decides to attend a school reunion. While he is in town a knock comes at his hotel room door, and an attractive nineteen-year-old woman, Christa, enters and declares that he is her father. Indeed Graham remembers having had an affair with Christa's mother, Peggy, a girl known for her exquisite acting in George Bernard Shaw's "St. Joan". Graham is able to eliminate himself from the fatherhood with some arithmetical calculations, but his curiosity is aroused.
As luck would have it, Peggy has concluded that Graham must be the father, with the apparent hope that some of Graham's rather minimal celebrity will rub off. She arranges a celebratory dinner at which she makes the announcement of Graham's paternity to her adult son - who, to everyone's surprise, rejects it vehemently and with a great deal of genuine anger. No one is surprised when Peggy goes missing immediately after this disastrous dinner, especially when she leaves behind a note indicating that she's gone off with some bloke. Apparently this isn't an unusual event. As the days go by and no one hears from her, however, it appears that something more sinister has happened... The novel is very well read by Gordon Griffin for Soundings Audiobooks.
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