Divining Women

Gibbons reads her seventh novel with a graceful, hypnotic rhythm reminiscent of its North Carolina setting. Her painful story, however, is anything but hypnotic--it seethes with volcanic intensity. In autumn, 1918, at the emotionally strangling confluence of a flu epidemic and rumors of imminent peace, Maureen Ross makes two important discoveries: She is married to an emotionally frozen tyrant, and she is pregnant with his child. When her 22-year-old niece, Mary, comes to her rescue, Troop Ross appears bent on ripping apart any sense his wife has of her own worth. Can Mary's youthful fire spark renewed self-esteem in her aunt, or is it too late? Gibbons's wise restraint as a reader in some sense prepares us for the novel's ultimate explosion. P.E.F. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

February 16, 2004
Gibbons (Ellen Foster
; On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon
; etc.) hearkens back to the Brontë sisters with her penchant for the gothic in this rather stilted novel of female oppression and liberation. As WWI draws to an end, 22-year-old Mary Oliver sits at home in Washington, D.C., waiting for her postgraduate literature classes at Radcliffe to begin. To give her something to do, her mother, Martha, suggests that she travel to North Carolina to visit Martha's estranged half-brother, Troop, and his wife, Maureen, who is expecting a baby. Troop was a terror as a boy and young man, but Martha is sure he has changed since his marriage. Mary, however, arrives to find that Maureen has been all but destroyed by Troop's psychological manipulation and verbal abuse. Troop refuses to allow newspapers into his house and intercepts all letters, reinforcing the impression that, though war is raging in Europe, the real battle of the novel is being fought on the domestic front. Diagnosed with "female hysteria," Maureen has been subjected to various demeaning "treatments." Troop blames both her and Mary's family for his elderly mother's death and rules by fear in his quest for moral superiority, while Maureen is coached by Mary to fight for freedom and self-fulfillment. Mary is well suited to the task, since she comes from an unconventional family—her grandfather, one of the novel's most appealing characters, is a nudist. Reading aloud from letters written by a family friend who sought adventures abroad, Mary helps Maureen draw closer to an appreciation of "the joy at the confluence of love and freedom." Erratic storytelling weakens the novel, but Gibbons's tale is atmospheric and unsettling, narrated in hushed Victorian tones and ornamented with period flourishes.