Hell: A Novel
This demanding and rewarding third novel by the author of Labrador (Farrar, 1990) and The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf (LJ 6/1/93) will delight all serious readers. Its sensuous prose and vivid rendering of the minutiae of everyday life propel the reader through three haunting tales woven together. They are the stories of two parents and two daughters in 1950s Philadelphia, a dollhouse whose inhabitants are not quite lifeless, and Edwina Moss, a 19th-century chatelaine of domesticity. The Philadelphia family's story is narrated by the elder daughter, who, infatuated with literature, peppers her narrative with sly allusions to Wuthering Heights (shutters banging, wind sweeping across the moors) and A Girl of the Limberlost. Strained marriages, details of housekeeping, anorexic daughters (both human and not), and the mysterious conflation of two paintings of Heaven and of Hell combine to demand rereading. For all collections of literary fiction.?Judith Kicinski, Sarah Lawrence Coll., Bronxville, N.Y.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.