The gift for narrative and character development that Anshaw revealed in her first novel, Aquamarine, are brought to generous fulfillment in this beautifully nuanced novel that traces a woman's troubled search for identity. When lesbian Chicago psychologist Chris Snow realizes that her lover, Taylor Heyes, has left her, it is not only her emotional equilibrium that is threatened. As she eventually discovers, charismatic photographer Taylor had many secrets and a dark side of which others, but not Chris, were aware. Chris fears that since she failed to understand the crucial relationship of her life, perhaps her work as a therapist also has no validity. Anshaw's account of Chris's confusion and grief and her shaky journey to self-understanding is completely absorbing. A fascinating clue to Chris's vulnerability and lack of self-esteem is revealed in flashbacks to her youth, when she was sidekick and accomplice to her father, a charming con man and card-sharp. Other characters are drawn with panache, including the elusive Taylor, the couple's various lesbian friends, Chris's Hispanic clients and her straight partner, even a chronically insecure dog. Anshaw's prose is supple and vigorous, providing quirky and surprising insights and witty dialogue. She surveys the terrain of female sexuality with frankness and compassion. While this novel will surely appeal to a lesbian audience, its truths about human nature should appeal to all thoughtful readers. (Oct.)
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Christine Snow is a successful therapist with a full professional schedule, a new house, a dog, and a live-in companion she adores. These seemingly mundane details cement together a life lived on the margins: Chris is lesbian in a mostly straight world, responsible but burdened with fallout from a wildly dysfunctional family, settled but with a recent history of promiscuity and excess. When Taylor, the love of her life, disappears suddenly, leaving no clues except photos of an exotic stranger, Chris's hard-won middle way implodes. Her frantic search for Taylor takes her from Chicago's lesbian social scene to Morocco and on a psychological odyssey as necessary as it is painful. With its heady mix of suspense and humor, edgy urban ambience, and down-to-earth, touching characters, this second novel from the author of the award-winning Aquamarine (LJ 3/15/96) will not disappoint. Recommended.Starr E. Smith, Marymount Univ. Lib., Arlington, Va.
A pleasantly ambiguous psychological-suspense novel from Anshaw (the award-winning Aquamarine, 1991), who shows us once again that a good story can be told as much by what it holds back as by what it offers.
When Christine Snow's girlfriend Taylor disappears without a trace one morning, Christine is at first reluctant to panic. This has more to do with Christine than with Taylor: Like all good psychotherapists, Christine has been trained to let problems reveal themselves slowly and with a minimum of overt speculation, and this emotional reticence will itself provide the best clue to Taylor's fate. "Making love with women," Christine says, "is the easiest thing for me to do with them. Everything else leaps so quickly into difficult and complicated." This attitude has assured her many friends but few mates over the years, and for a long time she pretends not to mind Taylor's absence. Eventually, though, she realizes that her independence is less complete than she imagines and, once she sees this, she takes on the task of finding Taylor. This finally carries Christine as far as Morocco, where Taylor had lived for some time under the influence of a strange religious visionary and the motley coterie that encircled her. Taylor's story, like all good mysteries, becomes murkier and more troubling as it proceeds, and Christine eventually discovers that she is looking for quite a different woman than the one she thought she knew—which, in turn, suggests that a similar reorientation of Christine's own personality may be in store. By the time we arrive at the last chapter, we find that the loose ends and ambiguities are beside the point, and it isn't troubling to find them unresolved. The real skill of Anshaw's narrative is that it makes the reader understand and appreciate Christine's changing perceptions at every stage of the action.
Clever, well-crafted, and deft: Anshaw draws her characters with an unsparing hand that is guided by a remarkably sympathetic eye.
