Your Blue-Eyed Boy

by Helen Dunmore

Overview

From the acclaimed author of "Talking to the Dead" comes a haunting novel about a judge whose husband is on the verge of personal bankruptcy and breakdown. As she struggles to shield her two sons from rising tensions at home, a letter arrives that threatens to destroy her public life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316197472
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	06/01/1999
Edition description:	Thumb Indexed a ed.
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 7.25(h) x 0.75(d)

Editorial Reviews

An intriguing situation, seamless pacing, a rising sense of menace and a surprise ending bring Dunmore's new novel (after the well-received Talking to the Dead) into the winner's circle. British district judge Simone struggles as the family breadwinner, while her unemployed husband faces bankruptcy and takes care of their two boys. Keeping the family together in their remote seaside village is hard enough, but Simone's fragile world also undermined by a childhood traumais threatened by the intrusion of her long-buried past. Michael, an American Vietnam veteran whom she met during a summer in the States, sends her an intense letter and copies of several photographs of them nude together. Then he arrives in her village, having decided to reconnect with the one person whose image he has nurtured over two decades, some of which was spent in a mental hospital. Dunmore intricately weaves past and present, bringing the experimental atmosphere of the 1970s to life as Simone reads Michael's letters and views the incriminating photographs taken by his war buddy, Calvin, whom she remembers as a constant unsettling presence. The indelible impression of a first true love contrasts with Simone's fierce desire to protect her family from what seems to be a blackmail plot. The novel's marsh-country setting, where bogs can swallow people whole, is a fearsome metaphor for a life abundant with insecurity and tension. This is a provocative tale, candid about the way past deeds and encounters can endanger present lives, casting shadows that can't be erased.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

To the outsider, Simone's would appear to be an enviable life, but as Dunmore (Bestiary, LJ 1/98) reveals here, Simone's life is fraught with personal and financial difficulties even before her former boyfriend Michael reenters her life after a 20-year silence. Michael begins by writing, then telephoning, Simone, and as he draws closer to her, Simone remembers her youthful and largely innocent relationship with him and is forced to question his motives and decide how far she's prepared to go to protect the life she now lives. Dunmore's writing is adept and her plot solid, if somewhat predictable. However, Simone never emerges as a truly sympathetic character, and the novel lacks the spark to captivate readers totally. Recommended for large fiction collections. Caroline M. Hallsworth, Cambrian Coll., Ont.

Library Journal

Dunmore follows the sure-handed Talking to the Dead (1997) with a complex and resonant portrait of a woman's bruising confrontation with her past. At age 18, Simone had an autumn romance with Michael, a Vietnam vet who was tender when not preoccupied by the death he had seen, or by his aggressively meddlesome best buddy, Calvin. Simone held Michael as he cried out in his sleep, and fantasized about not returning to her native England, but some intangible combination of Calvin's dogged intrusions and Michael's inconsolable sense of loss wore her down, and she returned home. Twenty years later, Simone is a district judge in an English seaside village, hearing bankruptcies and custody cases, working hard to support her debt-ruined husband and two young sons. Then an ominous letter from Michael arrives, containing semi-lewd photographs, and announcing that he's been searching for her for a long time. As Michael's letters and calls escalate, Simone is severely shaken: Not only does she suspect career-damaging blackmail, but she's flooded with stirring memories of her time with her troubled lover, and of her lonely childhood and the death of her father. And then Michael shows up in her remote village. He has turned bulky with age, after years in a mental hospital; he is as compelling in his pain as he is menacing. While Simone struggles to protect her family from disruption, she also reluctantly opens herself to her former lover and. in so doing, experiences the full weight of the losses she's been running from for her whole life. Dunmore confidently mines a number of subtle themes, the emotional perils of rendering judgment, the lure of vulnerability, the surprising power ofmemoryþin spare, graceful prose. A haunting and psychologically dense exploration, then, that reads as effortlessly as a standard-issue thriller.

Kirkus Reviews