Fata Morgana - Hardcover

Lynn Stegner

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1880909294 ISBN 13: 9781880909294

Publisher: Baskerville Publishers, Inc., 1995

Synopsis

"...a seductive, pyschological drama..." (From the front leaf.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Stegner's second novel (after Undertow) is a sensitive, fiercely intelligent portrait of a friendship--and its rupture--over time. The story is told by corporate lawyer Susan Thatcher in the wake of an anxious visit, in 1981, to her former friend, Dixie Darling, who's now in an L.A. prison for murdering her no-good husband in a drunken rage eight years earlier. In the process of taking up the question of how their paths came to diverge so radically, Susan recalls their rebellious years in a Catholic boarding school and moves through their bouts of self-exploration as 18-year-old roommates in 1973. At first blush, the two friends seem opposites. Dixie--bubbly, unruly, promiscuous, impulsive--adores her mother, a professional model, though she later recoils against her mother's ``empty nicenesss.'' Susan, cautious and introspective, overcomes a neurotic obsession with cleanliness and goes on to college. Unspoken bonds and shared psychic pain unite these unlikely roommates, and Susan, afraid of life, lives vicariously through the more adventurous Dixie, whom she can't straighten out. The title refers to Dixie; a fata morgana is a mirage or illusion, and indeed there's something insubstantial and contrived about her, as if she were more a concept than a character. But that's a weakness for which Stegner more than makes up with lush descriptions of nature and powerful metaphysical riffs on death, sex, love and the meaning--or lack thereof--of life.

Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Baskerville Publishers, Inc.
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1880909294
• ISBN 13: 9781880909294
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 357