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A Family in Crisis |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Linda Simon |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 12/1/1992 |
| Size: 2,031 Words, 11,914 Characters |
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BEFORE AND AFTER
Rosellen Brown
New York: Knopf, 1992
354 pp., $21.00
Rosellen Brown has a particular gift for imaging ordinary people shattered by catastrophe. In Tender Mercies (1978), she gave us the bright and lively Laura Courser, who struggles to make sense of her life after a boating accident leaves her a quadriplegic. In Civil Wars (1984), we encounter Teddy and Jessie Carll, social activists who are forced to confront their values and commitments when Teddy's sister and her husband are killed in an automobile accident, leaving the Carlls responsible for the two orphaned children. Now, in Before and After, Brown creates another family: Carolyn and Ben Reiser and their teenage children, Jacob and Judith, who face an unthinkable crisis when Jacob is accused of murdering his girlfriend.
Part of Brown's considerable talent for drawing us into these situations lies in her deft depiction of the ordinary context of her characters' lives. Laura Courser, Teddy and Jessie Carll, and the Reisers could be any of our neighbors, or even ourselves. The Reisers, after all, are intelligent, warmhearted, well-meaning people eager to impart strong moral values to ...
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... reviewing Brown's first novel, Autobiography of My Mother, noted, "A novel need not give us answers, but it should, perhaps, question the questions until they bleed a little." Exploring significant questions always has been Brown's strength, no less here than in her previous books. Before and After is the kind of intelligent, reflective, and wise book that her admirers have come to expect. vbcrlf
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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