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Synopsis
Bold, ambitious, and ultimately successful departure from the formulaic sequel, Maile Meloy's latest revisits the complicated
lives of four generations of a Californian family.
Review
Maile Meloy's second novel is less of a sequel and more of a companion piece to her Orange Prize–nominated Liars & Saints, even though both focus on the same family, the Santerres. In a bizarre but skilful twist that has the potential to alienate
fans of her debut, Meloy throws out the story she told in the first book, suggesting that it was merely a fictional version
of events written by Abby, the youngest member of the clan. While A Family Daughter purports to tell the real story, it's hard to discuss it without mentioning its predecessor. Yet the new work happily stands
alone as a dysfunctional family saga, featuring sympathetic characters (sensitive, almost-academic Abby) and one-dimensional stereotypes (spoiled socialite
Saffron) in equal measure.
With neither parent present for her formative years, Abby looks to her young uncle for emotional support. Their friendship
— central to the plot — eventually breaks acceptable boundaries, but at times seems the most natural pairing in the book,
especially when contrasted with the guilt, unhappiness, and serial infidelity of other characters. Secrecy is intrinsic to
the work — there is an abundance of taboo relationships, unspoken marital tensions, illicit affairs, and concealed parentage
— making the reader feel as if she has been taken into confidence.
Meloy's fast-paced narrative betrays her origins as a short-story writer, but A Family Daughter lends itself to breakneck plotting, as there so many entwined threads to grasp — and less time for the reader to notice the
implausibility of some (senile septuagenarian adopts Spanish-speaking Romanian child, anyone?). Critics may accuse Meloy of
laziness — she did, after all, have a ready-made set of protagonists — but this is indisputably an accomplished, original
book that traverses the globe, tackling heavyweight issues from religion to sexuality. Far from being gimmicky, the novel-within-a-novel
frame only reinforces the reader's belief in Meloy's sparse and thoughtful writing.
- Lucy C. Davies
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Synopsis
With cinematic flair, Gregory Crewdson creates photographs that investigate the psychology of life in suburban America.
Review
If artists like Richard Prince and Sherrie Levine can be called appropriationists for borrowing existing images and incorporating them into their own work, then Gregory Crewdson could be aptly dubbed a creationist for his meticulously constructed, photographic scenes of suburban noir. Although photographers
have been manipulating their pictures since the beginning of the medium — Timothy O'Sullivan and Matthew Brady documented the same Civil War dead dressed as both Confederate and Union soldiers — Crewdson has ventured far into the realm of myths, imagination, and
Hollywood.
Comprising work from the past two decades, the new monograph is ordered chronologically. Crewdson's early work (from
the mid-1980s) is imbued with a strange atmosphere, similar to a David Lynch film. An eerie, luminescent glow emanates from a single-family home at night, and interior shots are filled with suppressed
desires and loneliness. From there, Crewdson's ambitions explode. His "Natural Wonder" series depicts museum dioramas gone wrong, with birds perched over polluted swamps and rotting corpses (based on casts from
the photographer's own body) that sprout bloody thorns and crooked roots.
More recent series plumb the psychological depths of the mind — territory that Crewdson is rather familiar with, as
his father was a psychoanalyst: housewives stand naked, lost in existential thought, while other figures are frozen before
their friends and partners — on the verge of revealing a dark secret or making an ugly confession. The repetition of crop circles, alien shafts of light, and strange mounds of earth and flowers heightens the maniacal tension — and the viewer can't help
but draw links to Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Working with a production team that resembles a film crew, Crewdson calls his images "single-frame movies." And with
actors such as Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Gwyneth Paltrow before his lens, one can almost hear the shout of "roll camera" instead of the quiet click of the shutter.
- Christopher Y. Lew
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