****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
This tough story redefines realism. Jean McNeil's remarkable first novel stunningly combines poetic images of place with haunting parallels of lives that are inextricably tangled by mere fact of being family to each other. Morag, at age 8, trapped between the rages and hatred of her grandparents, must choose to stay with her grandfather who has held her literally and figuratively in the line of fire or to flee with her grandmother who survives, barely, by bitterness. The mystery of Morag's mother, who has deserted Morag, parallels Morag's story via descriptions of snapshots she sends from Africa.Told from adult Morag's viewpoint, the novel shows how memory incorporates evil alongside good in a child's unhappy life, how nightmares grow from family history. The characters aren't drawn in great depth, which accentuates their distance and the fears they bear. But the juxtaposition of harsh landscape and harsher life, of tough love and the masks that hide love, beautifully hold the tension of the novel taut as a bowstring from beginning to end.
