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Teenage
Orion
Hardback £12.99, ISBN: 0752851543
Review by Rhiannon Lassiter
[Armadillo 5.1 Spring 2003]
'Facing the Light' should have the strap line: 'Disappointed in Atonement? Read this instead' because in many respects Adele Geras' first adult novel is similar to Ian McEwan's ninth. Both begin in the summer of 1935 in an English country house where a child sees something she doesn't understand. Both are novels of two halves: an interlinked past and present.
But while McEwan luxuriates in punishing his characters as they struggle their way to an egotistical and equivocal conclusion, Geras' creation is much more satisfactory. Believable characters play out their personal dramas, tragedies and romances in the exquisite venue of Willow Court, ruled over by the formidable Leonora, eternally the daughter of the mysterious painter Ethan Walsh. A rich background and an elegantly arranged cast lead the reader through the intertwined family stories through to the heart of the mystery and a secret that has shadowed Leonora all her life.
The final resolution comes at Leonora's seventy-fifth birthday party and although I'd guessed the secret earlier, thanks to some cunning clues seeded earlier in the text, I was still gripped to the end to discover how facing the truth would affect Leonora and her family.
This is a beautiful chiaroscuro of a novel, filled with truly artistic detail and a well paced interwoven plot. The only thing that gave me any doubt was the title which seemed a bit weak for this novel and the subtitle 'The Secrets and Celebrations of an English Family' read like the work of a vanity publisher. I also disliked the cover. But these are minor quibbles of format and I had nothing to complain about with the excellent text. Adele Geras seems to have successfully made the leap into adult fiction and I look forward to seeing what she plans to write next.
["The Secrets and Celebrations of an English Family" is a strap line rather than a subtitle and was removed from the cover on the press copy. - Ed]
Buy the hardback from Amazon UK