The View from Here
A Novel
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- €12.99
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- €12.99
Publisher Description
A woman in crisis remembers a summer of hedonism that changed her life, in this novel about being “caught between the wiles of youth and the wisdom of age” (Booklist).
When Frances was twenty-two, she was drifting, scraping by giving English lessons in Mexico, when she met up with a glamorous group of vacationing Americans staying in a mansion on a private beach. Two decades later in rural England, she is settled into married life. Then she discovers a love letter from a younger woman addressed to her husband—almost at the same time that she learns that she’s facing a life-threatening illness.
As her contented existence begins to unravel and she tries to decide whether to confront her husband about his infidelity, Frances finds herself haunted by the memory of her heady desert encounter with the charmed circle of the Severance family. That summer in 1976 seemed, until now, like another lifetime. As she recalls this long buried episode from her past, she is forced to face for the first time her own role in an illicit romance—and the betrayal and tragedy that marked its ending.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A Scottish woman facing a terminal cancer diagnosis reflects on her time abroad as an aimless young woman in McKinlay's mixed debut. Frances has decided to kill herself after discovering she has terminal cancer and, in an unnecessary stroke of doubly bad timing, that her husband is having an affair. Torn between confronting her husband and preserving the peace in the house for her final days, Frances retreats into nostalgic reflections on the summer of 1976 in Mexico, when, having lost the boyfriend she followed across the Atlantic, she falls in love with a rich married man vacationing there with his family. Introduced to a crowd of well-to-do American tourists, Frances is drawn into the world of the wives ebullient Bee Bee in her third try at marriage, spiteful Patsy, and cold, regal Sally with their continual cocktails, laissez-faire parenting, and casual chatter, even as she slips away for dalliances with Sally's husband. Unfortunately, Frances's contemporary situation comes up much weaker than her formative past, and even if the milieu Frances mingles with feels straight out of Fitzgerald (or even James) instead of the '70s, McKinlay's hand is sure around the restless rich.
