Synopsis
Former debutante Margaret Hunter Bridges finds the social skills and personal values she has so carefully cultivated throughout her life becoming increasingly irrelevant in the face of her husband's infidelity and her daughter's accidental death
Reviews
This superior first effort brings a fresh voice to a much-studied subject, a woman struggling to redefine herself in a changing society. Raised to be a true Southern lady and to believe in all the region's traditions, Margaret Hunter Bridges finds as she reaches middle age that the world she knew has disappeared. Atlanta's mansions are being razed in favor of gleaming planned communities, her husband has left her for a young woman, her son dyes his hair several different colors and her much-loved daughter died in a freak accident. The novel begins and ends on April 17, 1981, when Margaret sits with a journal on the roof of her best friend's house, joined by her yard man. From there, her memories carry the reader through different eras and events, including her childhood and marriage, in a nonchronological narrative whose occasionally confusing structure is the novel's only major weakness. The story's emotional impact is consistently strong, as Margaret's first-person account mingles self-denial, compassion, wit and pain to show a woman attempting to come to terms with a life that is much tougher than anyone told her it would be.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A quasi-comic debut novel about an aging Atlantan debutante- -or, as she and the girls who grew up a generation ago in the city's ``right'' white neighborhood were called, a ``Buckhead Pink.'' This one's named Margaret Hunter Bridges, and things are not going well. A thin, young medical technologist has stolen her husband of 23 years, and he's a divorce lawyer who's giving her a raw deal: Abandoned at 41, Margaret can't think straight enough to keep from signing the separation papers without reading them, and simply can't contemplate getting a job--the Buckhead Garden Club's all she knows. Also, her daughter recently died while swinging from a vine in the woods, while her son, Jimmy, has shaved half his head and put a safety pin through his ear. She's got an old friend with terminal cancer, a lot of guilt, and a predilection for Muddy Waters--milk and rum on the rocks. So Margaret climbs on the roof to chat with Harold, the black gardener who's been with her for years. There, she writes in her journal and contemplates the city skyline, beneath which a serial murderer is currently killing Atlanta's black children. In her very thick fog, she takes on responsibility for that as well, since she admits to herself that she never questioned the racism around her. And so, before at last coming down, she says, ``Oh, Harold Booker Washington! All my life I've meant to tell you I am just extremely...extremely...sorry.'' Tonally schizophrenic. Nora Ephron still has this territory covered. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Former Atlanta debutante Margaret Bridges has been waiting for a year. Since the death of her 17-year-old daughter, she has been on hold. Her marriage has faltered, her residence has changed, her son has distanced himself, and the stable, well-known face of Atlanta has disappeared. All her life, Margaret has held fast to the teachings of her debutante upbringing, doing what is both polite and correct. Now she finds herself on the roof of her neighbor's house, contemplating her life and waiting for a resolution with a pitcher of Chivas Regal and Perrier. The characters in this story are well drawn, and the plot is superbly crafted and uplifting. Staats's first novel is a very strong statement about change in the South, the condition of women, and, ultimately, survival. Recommended for popular collections.
- Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Providence
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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