Curanne Trueheart

Self-conscious wisecracks and barely credible incidents aside, this plunge into the mind of a madwoman thoroughly engrosses the reader. Initially, it seems that thrice-institutionalized Curanne will find her way back to sanity by marrying Jack Trueheart and bearing his child, and that when Jack stops drinking he will give her the help she needs. But his love for Curanne, even when she betrays and slanders him, blinds him to the charade she is acting out of faithful wife and caring mother. Her fantasies are immense: incest with her father, drowned long ago; lesbian affairs with her sisters, her mother, even her child; transference to her baby of her tortured desire to be free of responsibility. As reality becomes increasingly unbearable for her, Jack tries frantically to save Curanne, and the last several chapters raise a masterful curtain of paranoia, ending in tragedy. This book is justified in the risks it takesit may not appeal to every reader, but will dazzle those willing to persist. January 31