In crafting her own version of Bloomsday from Molly's perspective, essayist Kitchen (Only the Dance) establishes straightaway that she does not intend to duplicate James Joyce's famous Ulysses
soliloquy but to offer her own interior, quietly detailed, feminist gloss. Kitchen's Molly Bluhm is 51. Since the tragic death of her four-year-old son, Arjay, exactly eight years ago, she has been inconsolable—even her love of singing Irish folk songs has deserted her. She spends the day of June 16, 1999, waiting in her remodeled farmhouse on Eccles Road (renamed Larch Lane) in Dublin, Ohio, for her professor husband to give a sign that he remembers the significance of the date. Off teaching, he does not, but Molly decides she will not allow Leo's neglect to "get in the way of her life." Kitchen fluently channels her narrative through the voices of characters Molly encounters over the course of the day—the demanding, begrudging Marcie, Leo's daughter from his first marriage; a pregnant neighbor, Jackie; a former admirer and music director, Ted Boyle, who is delighted to hear that Molly intends to sing again and agrees to meet her later. Kitchen's writing is powerfully direct, though the inherent claustrophobia in such a tightly packed story is compounded when Leo and his academic protegé, Steve, begin to bandy about the "interiority" and "intensities" of Molly Bloom's soliloquy. Molly finally comes to recognize that her life can no longer consist of waiting for Leo, and an invitation to sing again onstage at the pub underscores her newfound independence. Even this over-plotted ending does not spoil the quiet celebration of Molly's coming of age. (Sept.)
