Vows that have frayed and then broken
The Ice Chorus
By Sarah Stonich
Little, Brown, 336 pp., $24.95
The Tea House on Mulberry Street
By Sharon Owens
Putnam, 336 pp., $15
Lady Luck’s Map of Vegas
By Barbara Samuel
Ballantine, 304 pp., $23.95
Adultery is always a favorite in fiction. Fashions in subject matter come and go, but infidelity, with its powerful taboo and infinite plot possibilities, is always with us. These three novels turn, in various ways, on faithlessness.
Sarah Stonich tells a complex story of passion, betrayal, and rebirth in ''The Ice Chorus," her second novel. Liselle, a documentary filmmaker, flees Toronto to live by herself in a dilapidated little house by the sea in rural Ireland, far away from the tourist track. She has been drawn to the bleak setting after seeing it in a painting executed by her lover, Charlie, a talented artist. Their story, and much of this novel, is told in flashbacks. They meet when Liselle travels to Mexico to join her archeologist husband, Stephen. The emotional intimacy and sexual intensity of her relationship with Charlie forces her finally to see the shortcomings of her loveless marriage. Still, she is unable to bring herself to leave Stephen, and she fears upsetting her close relationship with their 18-year-old son, Adam. When Charlie mounts an exhibition in Toronto of nude portraits of Liselle, Stephen puts the pieces together. ''We've been humiliated," he tells her, characteristically. Alone in Ireland, thinking about her marriage and the affair with Charlie, Liselle is haunted by disturbing memories of her own beloved father, who was unfaithful to her mother. She begins to understand the lasting effect her father's infidelity has had on her.
''Look harder. People are so much more than what you see," her father instructed her when she was growing up. In Ireland she begins interviewing and filming people she meets, ordinary people whose seemingly quiet lives prove the wisdom of her father's words. Their stories are some of the best parts of this intricately fashioned novel.
If there were an award for best Maeve Binchy novel not written by Maeve Binchy, Belfast writer Sharon Owens's first novel, ''The Tea House on Mulberry Street," a bestseller in Ireland, would be a heavy favorite. It's a cozy, warmhearted novel about marital strife, romantic disappointment, and adultery. And love everlasting, of course.
The establishment of the title is Muldoon's Tea Rooms, a run-down affair in Belfast that attracts a faithful clientele, drawn by its old-fashioned charm and delicious food. The owners, Daniel and Penny Stanley, seem fatally mismatched. After 17 years of marriage Penny wants a child. But Daniel, a penny-pinching workaholic, emotionally crippled by a dreadful childhood, is adamantly against it. The oddly assorted regulars who come to Muldoon's have their own problems. Young Brenda Brown, a dreamy artist in search of an audience, spends her time writing quirky, funny love letters to the actor Nicolas Cage. Chubby Sadie Smith orders Muldoon's famous cherry cheesecake and cooks up some just deserts for her cheating husband and his skinny paramour. Magazine editor Clare Fitzgerald comes looking for a long-lost love. Bookshop owner Henry Blackstaff grows weary of his self-dramatizing wife, Aurora, and her literary circle, the Brontë Bunch. And the very proper Crawley sisters, 60-ish twins, get the shock of their lives when they peer into the branches of their family tree.
Owens tells her stories in a breezy, straightforward way, but some of these tales are a bit thin, the characters one-dimensional. ''The Tea House on Mulberry Street" is an easy-to-read entertainment with happy endings all around. It includes a recipe for Muldoon's cherry cheesecake.
Barbara Samuel's ''Lady Luck's Map of Vegas" has some winning characters. Flirty, flashy sexagenarian Eldora Redding can't get over her salad days in Rat Pack-era Las Vegas. Daughter India, dutiful but emotionally distant, has given up her ''perfect" life and job in Denver and returned to Colorado Springs to look after the recently widowed, heavy-drinking Eldora. India's manic-depressive twin, Gypsy, a gifted artist, has disappeared again, the only clue to her whereabouts a card postmarked Tucumcari, N.M.
Eldora longs to revisit Vegas and persuades a reluctant India to take her on a road trip. They can stop on the way, she tells her, to search for Gypsy, who after similar disappearances has turned up in New Mexico, the artist in her drawn by its vibrant colors and culture. The two set off in Eldora's vintage '57 Thunderbird, India at the wheel since Eldora can no longer drive. Along the way Eldora reveals secrets from her wild and difficult past. As the confessions escalate in shock value, India struggles to reconcile her own memories with her mother's disturbing revelations. India has a secret of her own: She's pregnant. Her lover has made it clear he's not interested in marriage or children. And India is reluctant to give birth for fear the child might be manic-depressive.
The swift-moving narrative alternates between Eldora's voice and India's, and it's always clear who is telling the story. At times the story seems a bit slick and contrived. Some of Eldora's secrets, for example, are over the top, involving more violence than is credible. The novel, Samuel's fourth, has well-drawn characters and an interesting plot that will appeal, especially, to those who like to read about mother-daughter relationships.
Diane White writes every month about new light and popular fiction.
