The View from Here

A Scottish woman facing a terminal cancer diagnosis reflects on her time abroad as an aimless young woman in McKinlay's mixed debut. Frances has decided to kill herself after discovering she has terminal cancer and, in an unnecessary stroke of doubly bad timing, that her husband is having an affair. Torn between confronting her husband and preserving the peace in the house for her final days, Frances retreats into nostalgic reflections on the summer of 1976 in Mexico, when, having lost the boyfriend she followed across the Atlantic, she falls in love with a rich married man vacationing there with his family. Introduced to a crowd of well-to-do American tourists, Frances is drawn into the world of the wives—ebullient Bee Bee in her third try at marriage, spiteful Patsy, and cold, regal Sally—with their continual cocktails, laissez-faire parenting, and casual chatter, even as she slips away for dalliances with Sally's husband. Unfortunately, Frances's contemporary situation comes up much weaker than her formative past, and even if the milieu Frances mingles with feels straight out of Fitzgerald (or even James) instead of the '70s, McKinlay's hand is sure around the restless rich. (Feb.)