A Circle Around Her

As Mary Lanaghan approaches fifty years of age, her children have grown and moved away from the small town in northern Massachusetts where Mary relocated after her divorce. Her days are circumscribed by lake, woods, and sky, by pensive walks in the forest with her dog. Her closest friends are her near neighbors on the lake, two gay men who own the town diner and provide some much needed sparkle in this quiet town. A Circle Around Her is Jonathan Strong's warm, thoughtful novel about a long, fateful season that brings Mary together with an extended family of children, friends, and lovers.

"This is the entrancing story of a woman poised between the summer and the autumn of her life. Jonathan Strong makes us feel the cool breezes beneath the shortening days, and he shows us how time complicates and colors our desires. This is a heartening novel. In each bittersweet encounter, Mary Lanaghan and her loved ones learn what it means to let go without giving up."?Michael Downing

"With spare, fluid prose, Mr. Strong envelops his characters in a dreamy, womblike world, delineating in knowing and delicate detail all the bliss and blundering that are part of life and love."?The New York Times Book Review, praise for The Old World

Jonathan Strong's first book was published to acclaim in 1969. To date he has published nine novels and short story collections, including The Old World, Offspring, Secret Words, Companion Pieces, and An Untold Tale, all available from Zoland Books. Jonathan Strong teaches writing at Tufts University, and lives on Cape Ann, Massachusetts.

An excerpt: A MAY MONDAY

When Mary Lanaghan's husband left her in 1985, she took her four children to the country-or so it seemed then-and found a house by a lake in the woods. She was unable to afford as much land about her as she would have liked, but for some years she and her two girls and two boys lived with the sounds of birds and at night only starlight. It was a refuge from the suburb where her neighbors had watched her marriage come apart. Her children went onto the regional high school which was a step down from their old school system, but Mary no longer cared what colleges they got into;

A divorced mother, her four grown children, their friends, neighbors, significant others and ex-significant others make up the interlocking cast of characters in this modern family portrait. At 49, divorc?e Mary Lanaghan lives alone in her lakeside house in a "nothing corner of Massachusetts," where she has raised two sons and two daughters in her retreat from suburban materialism. On long walks through the woods with her German shepherd, Hilda, Mary enjoys the companionship of the gay owners of the local diner, vacationing urban dwellers, area natives and even her curmudgeonly landlord. She seems to have forged a bond with the land and the people around her, yet she yearns for something more--and she's not the only one. Mary's daughter Rosa dreams of finding a more committed and tender partner than her ski-bum boyfriend; Mary's other daughter, Shirley, is pining away for a young hunk; Mary's son Bayard, a handsome Don Juan, is attracted to a kindly, AIDS-infected older gay man; and her other, shy, inexperienced son, Martin, yearns for a woman he's met over the Internet. Only Mary's dog loves freely, unconditionally and unquestioningly. In the kaleidoscopic narrative, relationships unfold for characters of every age and lifestyle. Tufts professor Strong (Offspring; The Old World; etc.) compassionately depicts unconventional families, and individuals grappling with homosexual urges. Leaving unanswered his most urgent questions, however, he sometimes lets his tale drift too far into ambiguity; as Hale threatens to sell out to developers, the uncertainty of the geographic and emotional ecosystems is left unresolved. Strong compels readers to care about his characters, so when he leaves them unmoored at the end of the novel, readers may also feel at sea. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Mary Lanaghan approaches midlife with an empty nest, having moved herself and her four children into a house in the woods by a lake in 1985 after her husband left them. Her house and land are surrounded with forest that landlord Drew Hale will eventually sell to subdividing contractors, but that's not as unsettling as the midlife changes she undergoes during her season of transition to age 50. Her neighbors, Ron and Victor, the gay couple encouraging her to reenter the dating scene, run the local diner inherited when Victor's dad died; Drew's daughter, Peggy, moves in next door, pining for her estranged husband, Stewart, Victor's best friend. All is set against the elegiac, contemplative backdrop of nature, with its shifting, yet stabilizing seasons, opening doors of opportunity for those with the eyes to recognize them. As summer ripens, moving closer to year's end, so too does Mary move toward greater self-sufficiency and inner strength. Whitney Scott