Duet for Three

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Decades of living in each other's pockets have only magnified fundamental differences between Aggie, sly and massively stout at 80, and her dour, God-fearing daughter June. Their uneasy truce is shattered by the breakdown of Aggie's health, whereupon June announces with grim satisfaction that she can no longer cope alone. Aggie, who delightedly torments her daughter with gusts of salty, piercing humor, is caught completely off balance by the threat of a nursing home. Alternating between the voices of these two women, Barfoot (Dancing in the Dark skillfully distills a lifetime of sweet and sour memories, beginning as Aggie enters into an unsatisfying marriage with a pale, cold Englishman who gives her little but the daughter who so closely resembles him. When June's marriage ends, she returns to the now-widowed Aggie with her daughter, Frances, a child as daring and strong-willed as June had been meek. It is to Frances that the women ultimately look to solve their painful impasse. Occasional slow patches hardly mar this poignant and gratifying tale of the ties that bind a family. (December)

Library Journal

Barfoot's third novel ( Abra ; Dancing in the Dark ) beautifully and sensitively explores the relationship between three generations of women in one family. Aggie, now old and obese, but once vibrant, adventurous, and irreverent, is taken care of by her prim and proper God-fearing daughter, June. June was married briefly and disastrously, and has one daughter, the independent, assertive Frances, whom Aggie loved and helped raise. A crisis is precipitated when Aggie becomes incontinent at night, and June decides it is time to put her in a nursing home. Through flashbacks and monologues, we learn of the lives and marriages of each, and move, as they do with each other, toward understanding and sympathy. A lovely, rare novel that will probably get lost among the potboilers. Janet Boyarin Blundell, M.L.S., Wanamassa, N.J.