A small Caribbean island whose people are starved for food and freedom is the setting for Morris's fourth novel (after A Mother's Love). Like Morris, who is also a travel writer (Nothing to Declare), protagonist Maggie Conover writes for a travel magazine. She has returned to la isla to update a guidebook she wrote two years earlier. It's a bad idea: during her previous visit, she secretly gave her passport to Isabel Caldern, the outspokenly disenchanted daughter of the dictator, El Caballo, so that Isabel could flee the island in disguise. Maggie's navet in returning to this totalitarian state is compounded by her behavior after she's arrested and detained in a seedy hotel. Slow to discern the danger of her position, she never contacts the embassy or a lawyer, in spite of her interrogation by a greasy government functionary, and other frightening incidents. Were this the only improbability, the reader might overlook Maggie's passivity, especially since Morris does provide some motivation for her flaky behavior. But it's hard to accept that Isabel, her mother and her daughter each achieve instant emotional intimacy with Maggie, immediately pouring out the stories of their lives in dangerously candid detail. These long, lyric confessions provoke echoes of Isabel Allende, but they lack her magic resonance. In the end, it is not Maggie's story but the claustrophobic atmosphere of a country locked in a dictator's iron grip that the reader will find unforgettable. (May)
Critically-acclaimed author of The Lifeguard, Mary Morris has created this novel with the same sensitivity and literary craftsmanship that won her the Rome Prize for Literature. Like her short stories, this novel explores the boundaries of friendship and love, and of freedom and confinement. Travel writer Maggie Conover is under house arrest at her hotel on la isla in the Caribbean. Because of her friendship with the revolutionary leader's missing daughter, Maggie is suspected of knowing where she is. Bullied and interrogated by the authorities, she fears for her life and longs for home. But as memories of her troubled past blend with her present predicament, she arrives at a welcome epiphany. An insightful, intelligent book, House Arrest comes alive under the spell of Alyssa Bresnahan's narrative magic. Her gentle, elegant voice puts listeners inside Maggie's mind to make this work even more haunting.
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House Arrest
Critically-acclaimed author of The Lifeguard, Mary Morris has created this novel with the same sensitivity and literary craftsmanship that won her the Rome Prize for Literature. Like her short stories, this novel explores the boundaries of friendship and love, and of freedom and confinement. Travel writer Maggie Conover is under house arrest at her hotel on la isla in the Caribbean. Because of her friendship with the revolutionary leader's missing daughter, Maggie is suspected of knowing where she is. Bullied and interrogated by the authorities, she fears for her life and longs for home. But as memories of her troubled past blend with her present predicament, she arrives at a welcome epiphany. An insightful, intelligent book, House Arrest comes alive under the spell of Alyssa Bresnahan's narrative magic. Her gentle, elegant voice puts listeners inside Maggie's mind to make this work even more haunting.
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Editorial Reviews
Product Details
BN ID: | 2940170674572 |
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Publisher: | Recorded Books, LLC |
Publication date: | 12/08/2020 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
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