Dark's stark, emotionally honest debut novel (which follows her short story collections In the Gloaming
and Naked to the Waist) traces one woman's reckoning with a childhood tragedy, set against mid-1960s America and swinging 1970s London. In rural eastern Pennsylvania, nine-year-old Jane MacLeod is writing a book about the happy family she desperately wishes she had. Her mother, Via, is dissatisfied and petulant, always resentful of the time Jane's father, Emlin, a heart surgeon, must spend with his patients at the hospital. One night in 1964, the family (including Jane's two younger brothers and sister and Via's homosexual brother, Uncle Francis) gathers to watch the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. All goes well until Emlin discovers that someone has taken the phone off the hook, so that he can't receive emergency calls. Angrily, he accuses Via (who accuses Jane) and rushes off to the hospital. He is killed in an automobile accident. Fifteen years later, Jane has moved to London, where she's become friends with bohemians Nigel and Colette. A political bombing and an affair with aloof (and married) American writer Clay West lead Jane to confront her long-buried guilt over her parents' unhappiness and father's death. Dark uses cultural icons and historic events to give texture to the pivotal moments in her characters' lives. Although Jane's final revelation is no surprise, the author's languid yet affecting style and true-to-life dialogue make this a satisfying read for the baby-boomer set. (May)
Forecast:Dark can already claim a modest flock of loyal readers from her collections and her pieces in the
New Yorker,
Harper's and
The Best American Short Stories of the Century. Blurbs from Michael Chabon and Andrea Barrett may help her attract a larger audience.
