Publishers Weekly
Ten-year-old, bespectacled Eira Morgan is burdened with both an eye patch and a charismatic, exotic older half-sister, Phyllis. Along with their asthmatic younger brother, David, the sisters spend a transformative summer in the English countryside with Aunt Maggie and Uncle Huw while their parents study birds in Fiji. Davies's uneven second novel (after The Madness of Love) cuts back and forth between that summer and Eira's lonely present: she's 36, lives by herself, pines for her married boss at the museum where she works and fantasizes about getting married and having a baby. One day she discovers an abandoned baby in a box on the museum's steps and delivers the foundling to the nearest hospital then finds herself bereft and flashing back to the summer when she discovered anorexic Phyllis was having an affair with Aunt Maggie and Uncle Huw's boarder, Edward Furnace. Phyllis, of course, becomes pregnant, and things end tragically after Eira interferes. The flashbacks are satisfying and lushly atmospheric, but the adult Eira plot lacks momentum, and she amounts to little more than her description of herself as "the sad woman with the green dress and the bright red lips." (Dec.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
In this British romance Davies's second after The Madness of Love Eira's present life as a single museum worker approaching middle age with a crush on her married boss is intertwined with flashbacks to a traumatic childhood vacation at the country home of her Aunt Maggie and Uncle Hue. The discovery of an abandoned baby and its return to its teenage mother force Eira to reexamine her admired older sister's hidden adolescent pregnancy with a tragic end while their parents vacationed in Fiji. Meanwhile, the happy pregnancy of Daisy, her boss's wife, only fuels Eira's depression over her life and childlessness. At times both dark and maudlin, this novel mixes Gothic elements with psychological self-examination in a spottily entertaining blend. For extensive romance collections. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
An intensely focused lyrical riff on guilt and desire. Having ended her relationship with a man she loved because he would make an unsuitable father, lonely 36-year-old Eira works at a London museum where she fantasizes about her happily married boss, whose wife is trying to conceive. When Eira finds an abandoned infant on the museum steps, she turns the child in at a health clinic. But the discovery has wound up her biological clock. At the same time, Eira finds herself returning to memories of the pivotal summer when she was ten and vacationing at the farm of elderly Aunt Maggie and Uncle Huw (who were going through their own romantic rough patch). When Eira arrived with her little brother, Eira's adored older, half-Indian half-sister Phyllis was already there, supposedly recovering from anorexia. Eira soon caught on that Phyllis, 17, was dating a local boy to cover up her serious affair with Edward, a 22-year-old boarder at the farm. Eventually, Eira realized that Phyllis was secretly pregnant, and helped with the birth. The infant was stillborn. Edward died in a car crash soon after. Bereft, Phyllis gradually starved herself, dying when Eira was herself 17. As a grown woman, Eira still blames herself for misleading Edward about Phyllis's feelings, causing his death and thus her sister's. Because the adult Eira is described in third-person past while the childhood memories are recounted in first-person present, the novel's back-and-forth between then and now takes some adjustment, as does the dreamy narrative voice with its affection for moth motifs, but Davies (The Madness of Love, 2005) shows tantalizing glimpses of humor and gritty reality as she pulls together multiple lovetriangles. Slight but haunting.
