When the World Was Steady - Hardcover

Messud, Claire

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0964561107 ISBN 13: 9780964561106

Publisher: New York Review of Books, 1995

Synopsis

In the words of Melody Simpson, their mother, Emmy was born with thick skin and Virginia with no skin at all.
It is on Bali and Skye, two islands as far apart as geography allows, that the sisters independently reassess their place in the world and gingerly find the new bearings that will allow each to renegotiate the circumstances of their lives with newfound acceptance and flexibility.

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Reviews

Two estranged sisters, their worlds turned upside-down, pursue separate quests for identity on exotic islands before being reunited in Messud's wonderfully observant debut novel. Emmy Simpson left London in 1960 at age 20 to marry a dashing Australian publisher. Twenty-seven years later, divorced (dumped by her husband for her friend) and at odds with her rebellious daughter Portia, a sculptor, she exits Sydney for the Indonesian isle of Bali. There, her credo that we create our destiny is sorely tested as she falls in with a group of exiles, misfits, long-haired idealists and eager young women dominated by a sleazy transplanted Australian antiques smuggler. Meanwhile, Emmy's prim, evangelical sister Virginia, who lives in London and cares for their invalid, eccentric, death-obsessed mother, is ordered to take a leave of absence by her married boss?on whom she has a mad crush. Her faith wavering, Virginia joins her mother on a trip to the isle of Skye in the Hebrides, accompanied by Nikhil Gupta, an Indian student, searching for his runaway sister, who eloped with a Scot. Shuttling among Sydney, London, Bali and Skye, the American-born Messud, who lives in London, weaves a beautiful, bittersweet story about the painful cost of self-knowledge and the unpredictability of life.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Set in England, Scotland, and Bali, this first novel by a talented writer concerns a mother and two sisters, all emotionally needy individuals who have trouble facing their past history and dealing with current loneliness. Recently divorced Emmy lives in Australia but seeks new beginnings and an adventure-filled vacation in Bali. Older sister Virginia, a spinster, found God after an earlier misfortune but lost Him again in a current "spiritual vacuum." Reluctantly, she agrees to vacation in Scotland with her mother, Melody, an eccentric elderly woman seeking to "uncover her roots" in Skye. Messud develops these women with wryly humorous albeit sad undertones, thus making them believable. Recommended for general collections.?Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0964561107
• ISBN 13: 9780964561106
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 270