The Effects of Light - Hardcover

Beverly-Whittemore, Miranda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446533297 ISBN 13: 9780446533294

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2005

Synopsis

Bound by the shared loss of their mother and their father's instruction to follow their hearts, precocious sisters Myla and Pru Wolfe become the subjects of family friend and photographer Ruth Handel, a nude child photographer who years later becomes the subject of a shattering controversy. A first novel. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

Reviews

Beverly-Whittemore investigates the relationship between art and life in an engaging but uneven debut that reveals both her promise and her youth (she was born in 1976). As children, Myla Wolfe and her now deceased sister, Pru, posed for a series of provocative photographs. Because of an unnamed (but aggressively insinuated) tragedy, Myla has spent her adult life as a history professor named Kate Scott (though an unconvincing one: "So much passion over something so potentially boring: medieval research!... She felt lost in ideas"). A mysterious letter and a colleague's lecture draw her back to her hometown, where she tries to put together the puzzle of her dead father's academic work, reconnect with those she left behind, rediscover herself as Myla and forge a new love with the aforementioned colleague. Her quest is juxtaposed with the parallel narrative of the tragedy's buildup, as told by her dead sister. Beverly-Whittemore gets points for her ambitious plot, but a naïve intellectual enthusiasm overwhelms the novel, and in trying to incorporate too many heavy themes, she obscures the novel's focus: is this a mystery? an allegory? a graduate student essay? At one point, Myla recalls how her father congratulated her for refusing to learn to read yet, thus demonstrating that "she wasn't ready... to lose the big picture." Beverly-Whittemore doesn't seem ready to lose it, either—but next time, perhaps she'll exert more control over her far-reaching visions.
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Thirteen years after she fled the West Coast, Kate Scott is returning to hesitantly pry open painful memories of her sister and her father. A mysterious package from an unknown benefactor shows Kate that someone else knows her turbulent secret history as a child-model for a controversial photographer. Her lover, Samuel, follows Kate and pledges to help her unearth the clues her father has left behind, but when Kate discovers Samuel's notebook with surreptitious jottings about herself and her family's notorious past, she rejects him. Readers will be drawn into the mystery surrounding Kate's sister, her father, and Ruth, the photographer, even wondering who Kate truly is. Told in alternating voices between Kate and her sister, this first novel is drawing prepublication parallels with The Lovely Bones (for the narrative voices of its teen characters), Girl with a Pearl Earring (for its art-world frame) and Possession (for its plot of academics searching ancient documents for contemporary truths. Passionate writing, skillful plotting, and intriguing characters make this a necessary purchase. An excellent selection for a book discussion group. Kaite Mediatore
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446533297
• ISBN 13: 9780446533294
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368