The Tempest of Clemenza: A Novel

Pymble, Sydney NSW ; New York Angus&Robertson 1996. 1996. Hardcover. Small 8vo hardcover 297pp. very good / very good d/w. From Publishers WeeklynAustralian writer Adams (Dancing on Coral) has a deserved reputation in her home country as a magical storyteller, but her current work, a brave but muddled mishmash of interlocking novels within novels, may not persuade American readers of her talent. Utilizing portentous flashbacks and flashforwards, narrator Abel Chase relates the circumstances of her life, focusing on the day of her teenaged daughter's death and ranging among other memories to reveal the "terrible things in our past"?an unhappy marriage, a vicious kidnapping?that she has withheld from the fatally ill Clemenza. The saga begins and ends in Ludlow, Vt., where Clemenza celebrates her 13th birthday and then succumbs to her illness, but the main events have occurred in Australia. In addition to her own life story, Abel intersperses a diary written in 1956 by an Australian teenager named Cordelia Benn, whose entries suggest a bizarre family secret. Moreover, Cordelia herself was writing a mystery novel whose chapters alternate with her diary (it is authentically naive and correspondingly tedious), and she also includes yet another manuscript?this one quite melodramatic?by a mysterious author. These various narratives give Adams an opportunity to riff on the nature of fiction, but she takes too long to tie the many plot strands together. The denouement leaves many details (such as the nature of Clemenza's illness) annoyingly vague while indulging in truly far-fetched coincidences. Much of this complex novel is imaginative, thoughtful and intelligent, but eventually the plodding passages dealing with Cordelia's life overwhelm the narrative, and one wishes that Adams had jettisoned some of her subplots and had concentrated instead on Abel and Clemenza's tragic tale. nCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.nnFrom Library JournalnLike Russian nesting dolls, the stories within this absorbing and moody novel open to reveal succeeding layers of finely detailed prose. Adams, who won the Miles Franklin Award for Dancing on Coral (Viking, 1987), here gracefully moves the reader through the landscapes of contemporary Vermont, the Australian bush, and a small seaside town as it might have been in 1956. Her heroine is 13-year-old Clemenza, who is dying from an unnamed condition under the loving eyes of the book's central narrator, her mother. With Clemenza and her mother, we weather numerous "tempests" both internal and external: not just thunder on the lake but family anguish and a kidnapping described by a teenaged diarist 30 years earlier. The mother's former husband and the diarist's father are both insufferable in different ways, and the women can be gruff and almost unpleasant. But it is easy to care for the central characters while seeing their faults, and, when all the book's secrets are finally revealed, there is the temptation to resume at the outer layer once more and begin reopening the artful nesting tales. Recommended for most libraries.?Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., Cal.nCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. .