Daughters of the House

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Shortlisted for the Booker and winner of the W. H. Smith prize for the best book of 1992, Roberts's richly atmospheric novel her first to appear here is a mesmerizing tale of adolescent rivalry, adult deception and a secret involving betrayal and murder. In a lyrical but tersely controlled narrative, Roberts gradually reveals the events 20 years past when Therese Martin, whose parents owned the farm and spacious manor house near the village of Blemont in Normandy, withdrew into a convent after her mother's death and the impending marriage of her father and her aunt. Now Therese's cousin Leonie lives in the house with her husband, whose father's grave in the village cemetery has recently been desecrated, bringing to the surface dark events suppressed since WW II. The narrative flashes back to the cousins' youth; they spend every summer together, first in idyllic companionship, later competing in budding sensuality and religious frenzy. Leonie sees a vision of the Virgin in the woods and Therese, for her own purposes, pretends to do the same. In Roberts's deft hands, the house, the village and the countryside are palpably evoked, and the social nuances of provincial society subtly conveyed. Sensuous images of ripeness and decay underscore the portents of death that run through the narrative. Although the ending seems rushed, with the magnitude of the finally revealed secret not quite commensurate with the ominous foreshadowing, readers will nonetheless be haunted by the story. Sept.

KLIATT

Therese returns to the house of her childhood in Normandy after spending 20 years in a convent. The house continues to hold memories of horrors and lies dating from the German occupation when three Jews were captured, along with the husband of a servant, held in the house overnight, and executed early the next day. The Martin family was implicated in some way, perhaps even as collaborators. The reader doesn't know for sure. The circumstances surrounding the birth of Therese and her sister, Leonie, generate another mystery, not only creating discord between them, but also confusing the relationships between other members of the family and the servants. The startling manifestation of the Virgin Mary in a clearing in the woods to both of the girls leads each in a different direction to seek comfort and solace. The house holds these many secrets. Both daughters know some pieces but not enough to solve the puzzles, so there can be no peace for either. This enigmatic novel will capture the interest of those teens that can wrestle with a complex set of clues that yield no definitive conclusions, but rather many possibilities. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1992, St. Martin's, Picador, 172p., Allison

Library Journal

In this lyrical novel, cousins Therese and Leonie come together and look back on their childhood spent in a small French village just after World War II. Events of the past the Nazi occupation, the death of Therese's mother, and the mysterious betrayal of a French resistance fighter and a family of Jews who had been hidden in Therese's house still resonate in their lives. In response, Therese turns to religion, while Leonie devotes herself to the minutiae of an ordinary life. Despite some good writing, the book fails to engage the reader because Roberts, author of several novels and collections of poetry, cannot make up her mind whether it is about adolescent religious fervor in which case, Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy , Harper, 1991, is much superior or the treachery of memory. This novel was short-listed for the Booker Prize and won the W.H. Smith Prize for 1992 in Britain. Libraries with large literary fiction collections should consider.-- Nancy Pearl, Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle P . L.