![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() As soon as they hear word of his accident, Gil’s grown daughters, Nan and Flora, drop everything and return to their seaside family home in Spanish Green. When famous author Gil Coleman sees “his dead wife standing on the pavement below” from a bookshop window in a small town on the southern coast of England, he follows her, but to no avail, and takes a near-fatal fall off a walkway on the beach. (Big Nurse is custom tailored for a busty Eileen Heckert.) Though extension is possible, make no mistake about it this is a ward and not a microcosm.Ī forsaken family bound by grief still struggles to pick up the pieces 12 years after their mother’s death. This is a thoroughly enthralling, brilliantly tempered novel, peopled by at least two unforgettable characters. The fatuity of hospital utilitarianism, that alcohol-swathed brand of idiocy responsible for the custom of waking patients from a deep sleep in order to administer barbiturates, is countered by McMurphy's simple, articulate, logic. He leads the men on to a series of major victories, including the substitution of recent issues of Nuggetand Playboyfor some dated McCall's. It is set in a mental ward ruled by Big Nurse - a monumental matriarch who keeps her men in line by some highly original disciplinary measures: Nursey doesn't spank, but oh that electric shock treatment! Into the ward swaggers McMurphy, a lusty gambling man with white whales on his shorts and the psychology of unmarried nurses down to a science. Kesey's first novel is narrated by a half-Indian schizophrenic who has withdrawn completely by feigning deaf-muteness. It can be taken not seriously enough or, more likely, critical climate considered, too seriously. This is a book which courts the dangers of two extremes. Chessman’s style is fluid and unobtrusive, and manages to be meditative without being abstract. Somewhat oppressive in its introspection, but nonetheless a compelling and sensitive portrayal of two different women, each trapped between two periods of her life. Hallie stays on until she’s convinced that her mother is out of danger, then returns to New York, filled with a strange sense of liberation from her past and fired with nervous excitement over her own future. Shocked by this turn of events, Hallie begins to ask friends about her mother’s moods and health, and is stunned to learn that Virginia had a miscarriage herself while Hallie was still a young child. Not long after Hallie returns home, her mother takes an overdose of sleeping tablets and has to have her stomach pumped. ![]() Hallie decides to come home for a week in July, and once there finds herself swept up in the recollections of her past amid the familiar objects, places, and people of her childhood. In the small Ohio town where Hallie grew up, her mother Virginia is equally listless in her own way, and keeps largely to herself, rarely venturing beyond the front door of her home. Still vaguely depressed over the miscarriage and afraid to attempt another pregnancy, Hallie also feels “dried up” artistically and wonders whether she should even try to return to her painting. A painter living in New York City, Hallie is married (to Morey, an architect) but childless, having suffered a miscarriage some years ago. Hallie Greaves has long since arrived at that point in life where trips home to visit your parents are no longer routine events. A quietly lyrical debut about a young woman coming to terms with family and mortality. ![]()
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