Trespass

July 9, 2007
This thought-provoking novel by Orange Prize–winning Martin (for Property
) opens deceptively, as the quiet story of a mother slowly adjusting to her 21-year-old son becoming an adult. In 2002, Chloe Dane is a loving mother and wife, an artist engrossed in illustrating a new edition of Wuthering Heights
and a protestor against the imminent invasion of Iraq. Her husband, Brendan, is a historian who doubts that his work has any value but is generally self-satisfied. When their only child, Toby, a junior at NYU, gets Salome Drago, his Croatian immigrant girlfriend, pregnant and hastily marries her, Chloe fears he was trapped by a calculating woman more interested in Toby’s family’s impressive house and property than in Toby. When Salome learns her mother, Jelena, whom she believed was killed by Serbs, is alive, she traces her to Trieste and abruptly departs to find her. Toby follows, and when the newlyweds decide to drop out of college and remain in Italy, Chloe sends Brendan to bring Toby home. A tragedy—one very convenient for the narrative—strikes while Brendan’s in Italy, paving the way for a startlingly light resolution. Forgiveness doesn’t come easy for the characters as they learn that nothing—not family, borders or survival—is inviolable.

Starred review from August 1, 2007
Chloe Dale, commissioned to illustrate "Wuthering Heights", lives contentedly in rural New York with husband Brendan, a history professor writing a book about the Crusades. Their life changes dramatically when son Toby introduces his girlfriend, Salome Drago, a brooding Croatian refugee with a disdain for the conventional. Chloe has misgivings about Salome, suspecting that she has trapped Toby into marriage when she becomes pregnant and the couple moves in. Chloe's nerves are further frayed from living under the same roof with someone who "has yet to bring so much as a dish to the table." Chloe is also disturbed by the presence of a menacing poacher who roams their property with a shotgun. Still another story is woven throughout in short, tantalizing passages. Jelena, Salome's mother, speaks about their family's tragic past, when their town was under attack by Serbs, and Orange Prize winner Martin ("Property") describes the horrifying collapse of Yugoslavia in terms of such haunting human stories. Suddenly, the trespassers are no longer girlfriends and poachers but intruders from other countries and other cultures. A major novel; highly recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 5/15/07.]Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2007
Winner of the Orange Prize for her 2003 novel Property, Martin is a coolly dispassionate storyteller with a narrative voice that is at once inviting and disquieting. Her latest novel opens as Chloe Dale, a book illustrator whose husband, Brendan, is a college history professor, meets the new girlfriend of Toby, their much-loved only child. Salome, a Croatian refugee whose family settled in Louisiana (her father is known as the Oyster King), met Toby at New York University, where he was instantly smitten, not only by her dark good looks but also by her self-assurance, born of shouldering adult responsibilities from a very early age. Chloe, feeling vulnerable and threatened, immediately dislikes Salome, viewing her as something like a predator. At the same time, a poacher, whom Chloe believes is Middle Eastern, is illegally hunting rabbitsin the forest behind her studio; the repeated gunfire only adds to the menacing atmosphere that Martin builds ever so slowly and skillfully. And cutting through the family drama is the voice, rendered in italics, of an unidentified speaker who deliberately if numbly recounts the numerous unimaginable atrocities that occurred on a daily basis in Croatia, forcing Salomes family to flee. Such horrific scenes are frequently juxtaposed, to chilling effect, with those depicting the Dales comfortable lifestyle. Although her plot takes some erratic turns, Martin effectively frames the immigration debate, implying that even the most well-meaning Americans lack all context for fully understanding, and therefore empathizing with, those for whom survival itself is viewed as something like a miracle.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)