| Kate passes out and dreams of a spiral stairway leading to a door marked, well, nevermore. Nevermore will she sleep with Rodney, who has lately adopted bizarre sexual practices. Through '60s, '70s and '80s England, Kate comes of age and middle years. From early on, her mother, difficult narcissistic Biddy, and her father, loving but too wussy to stand up to Biddy, disparage Kate's interest in science and overzealously guard her virtue. Shoehorned into an education major by her parents, she becomes an elementary schoolteacher and is betrayed by her fiance Jack. Her friends Moira and Ingrid and her Welsh paternal grandparents are her only constants. On the rebound from Jack, she marries prosperous Rodney but is marginalized by his eccentric family.
Rodney devotes himself mostly to sports and doesn't object when his smarmy pal Todd hits on Kate. Kate devotes herself to son Charlie and cooking, her weight yo-yoing. Periodically, her parents lure her home, where she falls back into her childlike posture, alternately nurtured and slapped. Back to 1995. Kate wonders why she stood for it for so long, and so do we. When her mother opposes Kate's move to France and sides with Rodney in the divorce, Kate divorces her parents as well. Kabak's gift for describing wonderful food and decor, and her way of encapsulating decades in a few swift strokes, take this tale beyond the standard middle-age revenge formula. | ||
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Plot & Themes Time/era of story - 1980's-1999 Internal struggle/realization? Yes Struggle over Main Character Gender - Female Ethnicity/Nationality Writing Style Sex in book? Yes What kind of sex: - actual description of hetero sex Amount of dialog - roughly even amounts of descript and dialog |
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