Colonfay

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY OCT 30, 2000

Crabbed and convoluted, yet psychologically astute, this debut novel charts the lasting effects of WWII on a French family and the Irishman who comes to be part of their clan. One afternoon in 1984, 80-year-old Armand de Coucy falls out of a tree while working on the cursed family estate, Colonfay, in northern France. For a week he lies on his deathbed. Meanwhile, his refined daughter, Laure, a lawyer and art historian, and her estranged husband, Irish international marketing consultant and free spirit Dermot McManus, ponder the past and their relationship. Once attracted to each other's differences, they can no longer bear to be together. The couple's only evidence of teamwork was their daughter, Penelope, who died young, leaving them heartbroken, distant and prone to philandering. The de Coucy family has a long history of sorrow: Laure, abused as a child by her uncle, blames her father for failing to protect her and dwells on his collaboration with fascist Vichy France. Long flashbacks to the 1940s flesh out the family past, and Laure and Dermot's conversations with their respective lovers and Dermot's psychologist cousin, Mouse Grover, drag out the rest of their unhappy histories. Finally, Armand asks his longtime friend and lawyer, Alain de Malherbe, to coax Laure, her brother and Dermot (of whom Armand is quite fond) to his deathbed, to allow him the peace that comes with telling the truth. Writing under a pseudonym because, according to the publisher, aspects of the novel closely parallel events in his private life, O'Grady demonstrates a nuanced understanding of his characters and a talent for description, though his elaborately structured narrative and halting, overworked prose handicap his ambitious effort.