Port Mungo

Gin Rathbone led a sequestered life with her brother, Jack, until he fell in love with Vera Savage, an eccentric artist 10 years his senior. The story reflects the color of its settings--London, New York, and Honduras, where Jack runs off to with his new wife and where passion is at its highest. The story's intensity, which focuses on several generations of family and the mysterious death of a child, is matched by the ardor of Jennifer Van Dyck's narration. She is elegant in speech and diction. Her compelling energy reflects the dark atmosphere as the listener awaits the unraveling of the truth at the heart of this story. J.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

June 7, 2004
The psychologically suspenseful story of Jack Rathbone, a "latter-day Gauguin" who flees his native England to pursue a career as a painter as well as a volatile relationship with artist Vera Savage, is narrated by his sister, Gin, whose obvious devotion skews her perspective. McGrath's sixth novel unfolds in a series of flashbacks, from Jack's childhood in England to Greenwich Village in the 1950s and, eventually, to the Honduran town of Port Mungo, where Jack develops a style he calls "tropicalism" or, more sinisterly, "malarial." The birth of daughter Peg threatens the marriage, and her mysterious death, at 16, dooms it; Jack moves in with his sister in New York. Ostensibly, the search for the truth behind Peg's death propels the narrative, but the mix of flashbacks and present action is confusing, and Gin's role feels trumped up. The book becomes even more baroque when Jack's second daughter, raised in England, moves to New York and agrees to let her father paint her, in the nude. It's a provocative conceit, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts. Despite McGrath's intelligent, lyrical prose, the story lacks the urgency of his earlier work. Agent, Amanda Urban.
(June)

Forecast:
McGrath should please fans with this return to gothic suspense after his historical novel
Martha Peake, but it's unlikely this will be a breakout novel. 60,000 first printing; six-city author tour.