Criminals - Hardcover

Livesey, Margot

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679444874 ISBN 13: 9780679444879

Publisher: Knopf, 1996

Synopsis

With dark poetry and domestic acuity, the author of Homework shows how families pull together, form themselves anew, and occasionally fly apart at the seams. Ranging from Scotland to America to Italy--and to a novel-within-a-novel--Criminals brilliantly captures the stories of complicated, sympathetic people who try to do right but turn somehow wrong. LG Alternate.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

etry and domestic acuity, the author of Homework shows how families pull together, form themselves anew, and occasionally fly apart at the seams. Ranging from Scotland to America to Italy--and to a novel-within-a-novel--Criminals brilliantly captures the stories of complicated, sympathetic people who try to do right but turn somehow wrong. LG Alternate.

Reviews

"Banker finds Baby in Bus station" is the caption that uptight London bachelor Ewan Munro ruefully realizes will describe events in this intriguing novel about the banality of evil. Discovering a swaddled infant in a lavatory stall in Perth, Ewan almost absentmindedly takes the baby to his unstable sister, Mollie Lafferty, intending to call the authorities once he arrives at her home. Mollie is in a bad way; she has split with her novelist husband, anguished because he has fictionalized her in his current novel, and, she thinks, given away secrets she didn't even realize she harbored. (Chunks of this novel are interpolated as Ewan reads it, adding tension to a narrative already taut with frightening implications.) For Mollie now recognizes that her great need is to have a child, and she conspires to keep the baby. Meanwhile, the child's feckless father, an amoral layabout called Kenneth, who has impetuously abandoned his daughter, realizes that he can extort money when he shows up to claim her; and her mother, a nurse from Bombay, becomes distraught at the infant's disappearance. Scottish-born Livesey (Homework) controls the narrative with assurance, gradually laying bare the bedrock of her characters' inner lives. One reads with fascinated attention as Ewan and Mollie?he preoccupied by a lapse in his meticulously moral behavior that has made him complicit in illegal trading; she sliding into emotional breakdown?discover how easy it is to become criminals. Livesey maintains a low-key style that perfectly matches the way ordinary lives can slip into chaos; her elegantly simple prose, her control of pacing and characterization and her insights into human behavior combine to produce a fascinating narrative. 50,000 first printing; Literary Guild selection.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

On his way to see his sister in rural Scotland, Ewan, a dour, middle-aged investment banker, finds an abandoned baby in the washroom of a roadside bus stop. As he emerges with the baby, the bus carrying his belongings roars into motion, forcing him back on board with the intention of turning the baby over to the proper authorities when he arrives at his sister's. Mollie, his sister, recently separated from her long-time lover, is on emotionally shaky ground and views the arrival of a baby on her doorstep as providential. Conspiring to keep the baby, Mollie plunges herself and Ewan into morally murky waters. Mired in complicated personal and work-related problems of his own, Ewan is blind to the extent of Mollie's imbalance and allows her to go too far. Livesey's (Homework, LJ 12/89) feverishly paced tale, which ranges from Scotland to America to Italy, is recommended for fiction collections.
-?Barbara Love, Kingston P.L., Ontario
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A stuffy yet likable young banker in London receives a very disturbing, rambling letter from his sister. Setting off to visit her, Ewan Munro discovers an abandoned baby and unthinkingly brings it along to Mollie's home in Scotland. An unfolding novel within a novel and Mollie's disintegrating emotional state are both pivotal to Livesey's spellbinding new work. Splendidly realized characters--engaged in complex, very human dilemmas--inhabit the heart of a rich narrative. Beautifully written, this remarkably inventive fiction satisfies on all counts. An essential addition for fiction collections, by a masterful storyteller. Alice Joyce

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679444874
• ISBN 13: 9780679444879
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 271