From Publishers Weekly
This beautifully observed story centers around Charles Connally, a Virginia college student in his mid-20s who is ambivalent about wife Carol's unexpected pregnancy. The coolness of his response troubles both of them on a Christmastime drive to visit his mother in Chicago where, in an all-night convenience store, Connally is present during a robbery that turns into a killing. Hailed as a hero for saving a woman's life, Connally, who knows his action was inadvertent, becomes increasingly anxious and withdrawn. Back in Virginia, as Carol's pregnancy develops complications, the prospect of fatherhood perturbs him more and more. He becomes obsessed with his experience in Chicago and with hidden events in his past, particularly those involving his father, whom his mother left when Connally was very young. Connally finally returns to Chicago for a series of confrontations. Examining the aftereffects--and origins--of violence in Connally's life, novelist and short story writer Bausch ( Mr. Field's Daughter ; The Fireman's Wife and Other Stories ) remains true to his emotionally repressed characters throughout. But while avoiding melodrama and sentimentality, he delivers less tension and fewer surprises than his readers have come to expect. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Expecting their first child, moody, impatient Charles Connolly and his somewhat dismayed young wife Carol travel to Chicago to celebrate Christmas with Charles's mother. During this visit, Charles is temporarily held hostage with a group of customers in a convenience store--an incident that ends in bloodshed. This random act of violence shatters the couple's marriage and leaves Charles paralyzed by guilt and fear. Praised as a hero who saved another's life, he is obsessed by the deaths he could not prevent and the realization that he did nothing heroic. Furthermore, the incident unleashes in Charles traumatic memories of violence suffered at the hands of his own father and fears that he too will be an abusive parent. Bausch's fifth novel is both a haunting tale of tangled events and a powerful psychological study.
- Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., CookevilleCopyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
