Unfinished Desires

Mother Suzanne Ravenel is headmistress at Mount St. Gabriel, a girls' school in North Carolina. Having been asked to document the school's history, she becomes fixated on one tragic night that propelled many lives into a tailspin. With a credible Appalachian accent, Kimberly Farr introduces listeners to each character with precision and diversity. She breathes life into Mother Ravenel's difficulties that school year and is especially skilled at portraying the friendship between Tildy, a wily instigator, and Chloe, a new student recently orphaned by the mysterious death of her mother. This complicated relationship is pivotal in a chain of events that reverses the fortunes of many lives, including those of a pretty young teacher and the headmistress herself. B.J.P. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

September 7, 2009
Bestselling author Godwin (Evensong
; The Finishing School
) brings readers back in time to the early 1950s in this endearing story of Catholic school girls and the nuns who oversee them. As Mother Suzanne Ravenel begins a memoir of her 60-plus years at Mount St. Gabriel's School in Mountain City, N.C., she's forced to re-examine the “toxic year” of 1951–1952, one of her worst at the school—beginning with the arrival of ninth-grade student Chloe Starnes, who's recently lost her mother, and Mother Malloy, a beautiful young nun assigned to the freshman class. Starnes and Malloy's arrivals presage a shift in the ranks of freshman Tildy Stratton's cruel clique, with significant consequences for all involved. Change, when it finally comes, stems from the girls' attempt to revive a play written years before by Ravenel. Godwin captures brilliantly the subtleties of friendships between teenage girls, their ambivalence toward religion and their momentous struggle to define people—especially themselves. Poignant and transporting, this faux memoir makes a convincing, satisfying novel.