The Other Anna - Hardcover

Esstman, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151704104 ISBN 13: 9780151704101

Publisher: Harcourt, 1993

Synopsis

Anna finds growing up in Iowa during World War I to be stifling, but thanks to the efforts of a Celtic housekeeper, she begins to find her true identity

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Reviews

In her promising debut, Esstman explores the social mores of early-20th-century Iowa in a sensitively depicted but occasionally maudlin tale. Twelve-year-old narrator Anna Berter defies her prim, socialite mother ("the Prussian") by spending time with a wise housekeeper she dubs "the Old One" and the housekeeper's granddaughter Edwina. This contentment ends when Edwina becomes pregnant by the Berters' caddish houseguest. Anna's parents adopt the child but banish its mother from their house. Subsequently, Edwina's longing for her daughter drives her insane, the Old One curses the Berters' selfishness, and Anna blames her parents for the tragedy. Despite its strong, plausible theme of adoption gone awry, the novel has an arch and stilted tone which, while it conveys Anna's immaturity, burdens the story. After a strong beginning that condemns the stigmatization of unwed mothers, the work grows ponderously melodramatic, especially as Esstman offers needlessly convoluted revelations about Anna's own adoption.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A young woman's rites of passage in Iowa before the Great War- -limned in a first novel of much craft and too little vitality. In a story that blends a traditional loss of innocence with mythic Celtic beliefs, and that's set in a prosperous midwestern household of the early 20th century, Esstman recounts how Anna Berter is tested, falters, but triumphantly comes through (as is obligatory in the genre)--though at a price. As a child, Anna loved to listen to the stories told by the Old One, a housekeeper from Scotland, of ``selchies''--magical seals that Celts believe can assume human form. The Old One and her granddaughter Edwina provide the warmth and affection that the young Anna seems unable to get from her perfectionist mother (``the Prussian''). But this slightly flawed Eden is threatened when a son of her mother's old friend comes for an extended visit. He soon seduces Edwina, whom he equally soon abandons when she gives birth to a little girl, Rose, whom Anna's mother and father adopt against Edwina's will. Driven mad by grief, Edwina haunts the family, and Anna, forbidden to see her beloved Old One, is puzzled by her family's harsh behavior--but not for long. In sporadic episodes of defiance, she takes baby Rose to visit the Old One and Edwina in their tumbledown cabin, where she learns the extent of her mother's cruelty, as well as a mystery about her own birth. Time passes slowly, and adolescent Anna--torn between affection for her parents and abhorrence of their treatment of Edwina--confronts her parents only when it's too late to avoid the inevitable tragedy. But Anna will survive because she has the ``selchies.'' Just thinking of them, it seems, will keep her safe in the years ahead. Full of good intentions--and not much else. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In this intense, lyric coming-of-age story, Anna Berter, the privileged daughter of the local doctor and his patrician wife in post-World War I rural Iowa, loses her innocence and discovers the power of the truth. Anna is pulled in one direction by her domineering mother, whose life is based on her childlessness and her fear of losing her adopted daughter's love, and in another by the Old One--their housekeeper--who shows Anna the strength of love and its responsibilities. Edwina, the housekeeper's granddaughter, is seduced by a charming but irresponsible houseguest of the Berters. When the Berters adopt Edwina's daughter, giving Anna a new sister, they set in motion a complicated and unnerving confrontation with small-town duplicity and hypocrisy. This first novel is recommended for literary collections and larger fiction collections.
- Linda L. Rome, Middlefield P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harcourt
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151704104
• ISBN 13: 9780151704101
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 370