MINUS TIME

As a member of the twenty-something generation in the 1990s, Helen finds the threat of environmental disaster, chemical fires, and contaminated water connected to the collapse of her family's personal relationships.

An extreme case of emotional--and literal--distance occupies Bush in this provocative, if at times overwrought debut. Set in the plausible present day, the story is alternately narrated by and descriptive of 20-year-old Toronto resident Helen Urie, whose mother Barbara is one of two history-making astronauts out to set a record for time spent orbiting the earth. The tale opens during "minus time," the countdown to the launch that carries Barbara and her partner to their space station. Helen henceforth communicates with her mother via telephone and satellite feed. Readers learn that Barbara's unusual detachment was presaged by her intense interest in studying science during Helen's and her brother's childhood; both siblings and their father felt they took a back seat to Barbara's ambitions. (This scenario yields debatable suggestions that career mothers, no matter how capable, cheat their families of attention.) It is often difficult to feel sorry for Helen: her excessive celebrity is unconvincing, as is her paranoia about the media, which eventually drives her underground to anonymously befriend a subversive environmental group. Still, after a long and low-key buildup of Helen's suppressed grievances, Bush arrives at a strong resolution that reunites the Urie family, figuratively at least.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Patchy yet captivating first novel about familial fractures- -with an unusual conceit. The conceit is that heroine Helen Urie, 20, is separated from her mother not only by emotional distance but by an unprecedented physical gap--because Canadian astronaut Barbara Urie is orbiting the Earth as half of a male-female team aiming to set a record for in-space habitation. The story opens with Helen and her brother, Paul, watching from a deliberate distance as Barbara rockets into orbit--``and in that instant, everything...changed,'' including the validity of perception: That night, the two gaze in disbelief as a TV replay shows their doubles at the launch's viewing stand--``a backup family'' supplied by a media-minded NASA for the no-show siblings who chose to watch from afar. Also backed-up is their dad, David, whom they haven't seen since he lit out years before to provide earthquake relief when the ``Big One'' hit L.A. (one of several ecodisasters that backdrop the plot). Author Bush pushes the sense of dislocation by alternating first- and third-person narration as Helen returns to hometown Toronto and takes an anonymous job waitressing. She also joins an animal-rights group, which leads to her unmasking when she's arrested for civil disobedience. But that act of defiance begins a transformative dialogue between Helen and Barbara (via telephone and closed- circuit TV), and--after Barbara is forced to make a fateful decision about staying in orbit--the entire family has a chance to start anew.... A slightly surreal collage of often remarkable images and sensitively drawn characters that doesn't quite cohere--but that Bush is a talent to watch is without doubt. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.