cover image Renifleur's Daughter

Renifleur's Daughter

Candida Fraze. Henry Holt & Company, $0 (184pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-0381-9

The narrator of this unusual first novel, 14-year-old Mona Emory, and her two siblings have grown up as ""silent observers'' in a sensual Eden carefully contrived by their mysterious and aloof parents. Papa, a research chemist for perfume companies, can sniff out any malodorous reality. Mama is beautiful, vague and in his thrall. When they are killed in a plane crash, Mona begins a search for the truths that underlie the enigmatic surface of her childhood. The next 14 years are compressed into a series of telling vignettes that deal not only wth the formation of a particular life but with the creative process itself. The rigors of romantic and sexual love, youth and old age, science and art are subtly woven into a lyrical whole. Told in a voice both true and original, the book will make its strongest appeal to young, sensitive readers. (June 12)