Red Audrey and the Roping
Malone has lived in Hawaii, and in her first novel, the land and sea are as much characters as the heroine, Jane, and her cronies. The loss of her mentally unstable mother to suicide has left this thirtysomething university Latin instructor wracked with guilt, and fleeing the risk of intimacy, although as a long-board surfing enthusiast, she risks the biggest waves. Told from an accident survivor’s viewpoint from a hospital bed, Malone’s tale of love in the tropics is something of a wave itself. Luminescent writing swells with the heady rush of the past, with its rich tapestry of mournful mother yearning, mixed with lush sensuality experienced in the arms of her landlord, Emily; then crashing to an invalid’s grim reality of casts and IV drips. The roping, a linguistic holdover from the heroine’s years in Ireland, refers physically to the ties binding Jane to her sadist male lover, Nick, and figuratively as the entanglement of feelings. Finely tuned, daring, and perceptive, Malone’s auspicious debut leaves us wanting more. --Whitney Scott