Collaborators

Janet and Dovie, a Mennonite mother and daughter, accompany each other through the events of their lives, as their religious principles define their love for God, man, and each other

Against a landscape composed of and by women, men hardly register in this thin, elegant novel by the author of Places in the World a Woman Could Walk. Dovie (formally named Andrea Doria) listens closely to her Mennonite mother, who seems to carelessly transcend the conventions that circumscribe their lives, substituting her own strict rhythm and a personal catechism that she imparts to her willing pupil. As a child, Dovie believes her mother fiercely, uncritically absorbing her views on sexuality, God and men, while the farmwork of the long tobacco season unfolds around them. It's only in retrospect that she concludes, "My mother lied to me about everything . . . She crooned and ranted and cooked up powerful storms of lies that held like uncalled-for weather over my childhood." Yet in her turn, betrayed by the stroke that steals her mother's memory and then her life, Dovie conspires to pass on the lessons she learned to her own daughter. Although the novel cannot transcend its fragmented structure, those who savor rich cadences and the unexpected, beautifully turned phrase will find much to satisfy the senses.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Dovie's mother said that "goodness was passion," and the Mennonite farm girl believed her, seeing the world of Blue Ball, Pennsylvania, through her mother's eyes. This 12-year-old also knew that "daily life was no idyll." One glimpse of the State Penitentiary across the fields was ample proof. Yet good and evil seemed lost in the slat-sided tobacco barn where a doodling finger brought words to life in the amber dust, transforming the ordinary into shimmering dreams. Kauffman's first novel adroitly traces the symbiosis of imagination and curiosity between an extraordinary mother and her awe-struck child. Although its male characters and Mennonite trappings seem mere expository asides, Collaborators is rich with the rhythms that distinguished Kauffman's short story collection, Places in the World a Woman Could Walk ( LJ 11/15/83), its language as sharply fresh as the salt Dovie licks from her mother's bare arm. Paul E. Hutchison, English Dept., Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.