The Other Side of You
by Salley Vickers
In a Heady New Novel, a Sensitive Psychiatrist Observes the Art of the Mind
A review by Michael Dirda
In Salley Vickers's earlier novel about love and loss, Instancesof the Number 3, she wrote: "Some say this is what is meant bythe law of karma, a stepping aside from a moment of possibilityonly to be forever haunted by its unrealised spectre." That HenryJamesian sense of a missed life -- of what might have been --suffuses The Other Side of You and reminds us that Vickers isa novelist in the great English tradition of moral seriousness.Her characters suffer, they struggle to be true to both themselvesand the promptings of the human heart, and they eventually acceptthat a quiet accommodation to one's lot may be the most that anyof us can hope for. Yet sometimes, during even the most seeminglydrab existence, a moment or a memory of real unclouded happinessmay be unexpectedly snatched from the maw of time.
About Me
- Xerxes
- New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
- Admire John McPhee, Bill Bryson, David Remnick, Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr and James Martin (and most open and curious minds)
No comments:
Post a Comment