Tall, ungainly, limping, raised to believe no man will have her, sex is all the more attractive to Shelley because it is impossible, as impossible as it is necessary. Over the course of its slim narrative, Off Keck Road follows the lives of these three from the late 1950s to the 1980s or, more properly, Bea's life as it is reflected against the other two. All three become involved at one level or another with the same married man, but only one establishes anything like a romantic relationship. Bea also pursues, as far as she can, a priest, who seems more her type. Like a lot of people, Bea's life becomes absorbed by time, until she finds herself settled in comfortable but unfulfilling spinsterhood, where the highlights of her life are knitting and crawling into bed with a fresh copy of New York magazine, catching up on all the news in a city she's never visited.
People grow up, people grow old, and after awhile, chances just stop presenting themselves.
Simpson's people are simple or decent or quietly noble, and on the rare occasion when they aren't they are bathed in authorial forgiveness. There are no unpleasant depths, just slight dips in humanity. But good cheer doesn't compensate for the thinness of a story, or perhaps I should say the thinness of the idea.