The Orphan Game by Ann Darby
Fiction
1999 William Morrow & Company
Read in October 1999
Rating: 2/5 (Fair)
Publisher's Blurb:
Beautifully written, wonderfully observed, and deeply felt, Ann Darby's haunting first novel marks the debut of an important voice in women's fiction. The Orphan Game tells the story of a young woman's passage from the troubled family she's longing to escape to the "family" she struggles to create when she is forced into an early adulthood.
As the war in Vietnam escalates and as brush fires are blackening the California foothills, the Harris family shatters and its members are driven to find new ways to live with one another. With an intimacy immediate and true, The Orphan Game portrays the powerful love that not only can bind a family, but can also break it apart.
Set in a quiet Southern California town in 1965, a town where the rules of the fifties haven't quite departed and the new mores of the sixties are fast encroaching, this rueful tale is told in the intertwined voices of three women: Maggie, the young woman struggling to define herself; Marian, the mother who must relinquish her; and Mrs. Rumsen, the childless great-aunt who cares for Maggie when her mother can't. As each woman tells her tale, it becomes clear that each has, in her own way, played the orphan game--taken the risk to leave home, to claim her life, and, above all, to be loved.
My Original Thoughts (1999):
An ok read, but nothing special. Just enough to keep me interested and finish the book, but not by much.
My Current Thoughts:
I suspect it was the Southern California setting that appealed to me, but apparently that wasn't enough to make for a great read. I don't remember the plot or the characters and I'll bet it was something I stumbled upon at the library.
Oh no, disappointing but, seems like good potential.
ReplyDeleteDiane, I honestly don't remember anything about this book. That's probably more to do with the novel itself and not the lapse of time.
DeleteI don't think I've heard of this one before and sounds like it was a missed opportunity to explore how the change of the times was affecting each generation.
ReplyDeleteIliana, I've read a couple of other 3-generation books, but this one didn't do a thing for me. The one that I do remember pretty well is Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris. I think Isabel's Daughter by Judi Hendricks (which I read years ago) is also a 3-generational novel. Not 100% on that, though.
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