Criminals

Starred review from January 1, 1996
``Banker finds Baby in Bus station'' is the caption that uptight London bachelor Ewan Munro ruefully realizes will describe events in this intriguing novel about the banality of evil. Discovering a swaddled infant in a lavatory stall in Perth, Ewan almost absentmindedly takes the baby to his unstable sister, Mollie Lafferty, intending to call the authorities once he arrives at her home. Mollie is in a bad way; she has split with her novelist husband, anguished because he has fictionalized her in his current novel, and, she thinks, given away secrets she didn't even realize she harbored. (Chunks of this novel are interpolated as Ewan reads it, adding tension to a narrative already taut with frightening implications.) For Mollie now recognizes that her great need is to have a child, and she conspires to keep the baby. Meanwhile, the child's feckless father, an amoral layabout called Kenneth, who has impetuously abandoned his daughter, realizes that he can extort money when he shows up to claim her; and her mother, a nurse from Bombay, becomes distraught at the infant's disappearance. Scottish-born Livesey (Homework) controls the narrative with assurance, gradually laying bare the bedrock of her characters' inner lives. One reads with fascinated attention as Ewan and Mollie--he preoccupied by a lapse in his meticulously moral behavior that has made him complicit in illegal trading; she sliding into emotional breakdown--discover how easy it is to become criminals. Livesey maintains a low-key style that perfectly matches the way ordinary lives can slip into chaos; her elegantly simple prose, her control of pacing and characterization and her insights into human behavior combine to produce a fascinating narrative. 50,000 first printing; Literary Guild selection.

September 1, 1995
In this latest from Scotswoman Livesey, author of the well-received Homework (LJ 12/89), an abandoned infant touches the lives of five very different people. A Literary Guild alternate.

January 1, 1996
A stuffy yet likable young banker in London receives a very disturbing, rambling letter from his sister. Setting off to visit her, Ewan Munro discovers an abandoned baby and unthinkingly brings it along to Mollie's home in Scotland. An unfolding novel within a novel and Mollie's disintegrating emotional state are both pivotal to Livesey's spellbinding new work. Splendidly realized characters--engaged in complex, very human dilemmas--inhabit the heart of a rich narrative. Beautifully written, this remarkably inventive fiction satisfies on all counts. An essential addition for fiction collections, by a masterful storyteller. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)