Fortunate Lives (First Edition)

The author of Dale Loves Sophie to Death picks up the Howell family saga just as their oldest son, David, prepares to enter Harvard, revealing the evolution of a mother-son relationship over the course of a summer. 50,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo.

The perilous shoals of domesticity--in particular, the tensions, misunderstandings and frustrations on which communication between parents and children founder--are addressed with consummate delicacy, grace and skill in Dew's third novel, which revisits the characters of Dale Loves Sophie to Death . The Howells family--Dinah and Martin and their children, 18-year-old David and preadolescent Sarah--have gingerly resumed normal life six years after the accidental death of the middle child, Toby. During one summer in their small college town in the Berkshires, the family prepares for David's departure for Harvard and copes with the intrusion into their daily routines of Netta Breckenridge, a seemingly needy but highly manipulative divorcee, and Owen Croft, the young man whose car killed Toby and whom Martin, a professor and editor of a literary magazine, has agreed to employ. During this transitional time, Dinah dreads David's leaving the tight family unit and puzzles over why he has become surly, cold and aloof; David experiences a wrenching rite of passage; and Martin finally comes to terms with the circumstances of Toby's death. Dew's gift is to write simply yet eloquently of the deep-flowing currents of domestic life, the barely acknowledged emotions that color even ordinary encounters and that glimmer under the surface of routine family activities. Though the events recounted in this narrative are minimal and mundane (except for a charming scene in which a puppet called Moonflower makes her annual appearance at a Fourth of July party), the narrative brims with insights about the parent-child relationship and the "chemistry of families." Thoughtful, often provocative and radiant with understanding, the novel resonates with honest feeling. First serial to McCall's; BOMC selection.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

After her mediocre second novel (The Time of Her Life, 1984), Dew resurrects the Howells family from her stunning debut, Dale Loves Sophie to Death (1981), and proves, once again, that common sense and elegant prose can transform ordinary lives into compelling fiction. Since last heard from, the Howells (``the world's last happy family'') have endured their share of tragedy. The death of son Toby in a car accident remains ``unresolved'' for the rest of the family six years later, as oldest son David prepares to leave for Harvard. Martin and Dinah, now in their 40s, spend this summer sorting out their emotional lives as parents--and as people of impeccable honor, manners, and good taste. Which, in Dew's view, doesn't mean they're heavily repressed. These are well-meaning, liberalish parents who enjoy life in their college town (a thinly disguised Williamstown, Mass.), where Martin teaches and Dinah maintains ``the physical equilibrium of their domestic arrangements.'' Dinah's unconditional and overwhelming love for her children doesn't prevent her from mothering those who stray onto her always open hearth. This summer, Netta Breckenridge, a young, hyperintense philosopher, wanders into view, along with her sad little daughter. While Dinah frets over Martin's fascination with the brilliant instructor, she fails to realize the obvious--her little boy David is now a young man with intellectual and sexual appetites of his own. As Dinah fears the various threats to her admittedly arbitrary domestic order, Martin tries to make peace with the boy who inadvertently killed his son. Throughout here, Dinah rewrites a letter solicited by Harvard's Dean of Students about her son. It's a rather trite way of marking her progress through this summer of ``letting go''--and unworthy of the more profound insight into parenthood that distinguishes this emotionally precise novel. Despite some glaring loose ends--will we hear from the Howells again?--this is a defiantly small fiction and, in its way, an extraordinary tale of how self-identity emerges from the bonds of family. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Dew continues the story of the New England Howell family in this sequel to the prize-winning Dale Loves Sophie to Death ( LJ 5/15/81). The story centers around a summer six years after the death of the oldest son, Toby, when his surviving brother David is readying himself for Harvard. Parents Martin and Dinah are thus forced to come to grips with the death of one son and the departure (another sort of family "death") of the other. Ordinary People is at times suggested, but here it is Martin who must overcome his guilt and anger. During this one summer both he and Dinah learn that life goes on and that it is good. This is the kind of novel one doesn't find much anymore--featuring a sophisticated, Cheever-like town and people centered around a college and its subculture (Martin is a professor and editor of a literary magazine), where nothing much happens but the reader has a certain satisfaction in savoring the prose itself. A nice haven in the midst of the usual best-seller dreck. BOMC selection; serial rights to McCall's ; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/91.
- Rosellen Brewer, Monterey Bay Area Cooperative Lib. System, Cal.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.