Kyra

October 22, 2007
Psychologist Gilligan’s landmark study of gender and moral thinking, In a Different Voice (1982), set off a generation’s worth of Mars vs. Venus debates. In Gilligan’s poised debut novel, Kyra is a Cambridge-based architect and professor of architecture who meets Andreas, an opera director, at a friend’s Thanksgiving dinner. Both have lost spouses to political turmoil. They are intrigued by each other, falling first into companionship as he persuades her to design sets for his nontraditional production of Tosca, and later into an affair. When Andreas leaves suddenly to pursue his work, Kyra spirals downward, bottoming out in a dramatic attempt to find out what is “real.” As Kyra begins an unconventional, sometimes combative course of therapy, Andreas floats in and out of her life. The novel’s great strength is Kyra’s voice, which Gilligan renders with assurance and lyricism. The result is a powerful portrait of a complex character.

January 15, 2008
When Kyra Levin, an architect involved in building an experimental city/arts complex on a small island off the Massachusetts coast, meets Hungarian theatrical director Andreas, she is cautious about their attraction. With much respect for each other's professions, they collaborate on staging an unconventional opera and ultimately fall in love. Kyra has loved deeply before; her husband was murdered by her half-brother during the 1975 civil war in Cyprus. There is a depth of sadness in Andreas, too, owing to a similar love-related loss. When these two creative people part suddenly, Kyra experiences a breakdown and turns to a psychotherapist named Greta; their relationship becomes the ground for the novel's richest excavations. This first novel by feminist scholar Gilligan, best known for her groundbreaking 1977 work, "In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development, " has a rarefied, cerebral quality that may not appeal to wide audiences. Recommended for larger libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 9/1/07.]Keddy Ann Outlaw, Harris Cty. P.L., Houston

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2007
In her elegant first novel, influential psychologist and gender scholar Gilligan combines intellectual rigor with classy sensuality to create a love story of unusually ambitious dimensions. Having found sanctuary at Harvard after fleeing civil wartorn Cyprus and her husbands murderer, architect Kyra has foresworn love and devoted herself to a dream project: a model city on an island off the coast of Massachusetts. Andreas, a Hungarian conductor and theater director, is also a refugee from terror and the loss of his spouse. Wounded souls finding succor in art, they are each committed to breaking down aesthetic barriers in quests for genuine emotion yet each is afraid of love. Gilligan writes of her stylish, jet-setting characters artistic efforts with great passion while choreographing an angst-ridden, often stalled love affair. The novels most electric scenes take place not in private but during lectures, rehearsals, and Kyras sessions with her analyst. Gilligan slyly conjures an operatic romance as cover for provocative inquiries into creativity, memory, sexuality, and howwe are molded by the hidden structures of family, society, and culture.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)