Isabel Out of the Rain - Softcover

Gammon, Catherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0916515974 ISBN 13: 9780916515973

Publisher: Mercury House, 1991

Synopsis

Russell, a Vietnam veteran, finds his life changed after he takes in Isabel, a mysterious teenage runaway, who uses constantly changing stories as a means of self-protection

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Russell takes Isabel in ``like a lost kitten.'' He's 37, she's 14.parallelism. ok?aa/yes/pk He loves her, sometimes desires her, believes she was fated to come to him. This vague presentiment becomes unnervinglyor `tragically'? aa concrete when Isabel says that their meeting was no accident--he is her father. Or is he? Isabel tells many stories (not lies, according to Russell's distinction: ``A lie is not a story. Somewhere in a story the truth is concealed''). She is a mystery that Russell must solve. Her past is somehow connected with his own and with his friend from the Vietnam war, the powerful, maya-worshippingl.c. maya. sg Billy Santana, who stole Russell's wife and took her to live in Guatemala. A murder frames the novel, and Russell's brother, Cheyenne, seems guilty. Oddly enough, he, too, knows Isabel. Gammon crafts a solid psychological mystery with Oedipal undercurrents that arise fromundercurrents is plural, and `arise from' is less wordy than `rise out of'. ok? aa/ok/pk a mist of confusion and nightmarish flashbacks--of Vietnam, of sexual abuse--becoming clear only at the finish. Sometimes the prose in this first novel is thick, asking more questions than it answersor:`asking more questions than it answers' aa . But the conclusion strikes with force owing to its stealthy, veiled approach.

Copyright 1991 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

A somber tone dominates this contemporary (mostly dialog) first novel of human deceptions and love. Emotionally paralyzed Russell takes in beguiling teenaged Isabel from the New York City streets. She becomes the catalyst through which Russell relives and reconciles his past, aided by the appearance of his younger alcoholic brother Cheyenne and Vietnam war buddy Santana. The opening chaper, "Trespass," is a tightly written short story (earlier published in the Iowa Review ) which connects with the main story in a bizarre, contrived episode toward the end. The rest of the book is uneven; speaker and timeframe are easily confused in the long dialog sequences that teeter between past and present and often include a character's reminiscences and secondary conversations. In general Gammon's writing is visual and poetic, often insightful, but never captivating. A marginal purchase.
- Pamela J. Peters, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mercury House
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0916515974
• ISBN 13: 9780916515973
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200