Ancestral Truths
A Novel
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
There were three possible reasons given for the disappearance of the two hikers on Mount Nyangani: the treacherous terrain and climate; the banditos armados; the unforgiving spirit called Chirikuzi. In David' case there was a fourth--that Clare might have killed him.
Unable to remember exacly what happened on the mountain in Zimbabwe and trying to come to terms with the loss of her hand in the accident, Clare is taken home to Scotland where her large, loving, questioning, and uncomfortably acute family become almost unbearable. She had wanted David dead, but did that mean she had killed him? Her mother's High Church concern, Anni's sharp-tongued radicalism, santly Felicity's internal fury, and her deaf niece Alice's fascination with the prosthetic hand seem at first to distract from Clare's problems, until the aristocratic family's pieties pierce her cocoon of post-traumatic amnesia.
Family resentments flare and fade, divisions fester and heal, and as clare uncovers buried fears, she comes to understand that the real question about the accident on Mount Nyangani is less what she has forgotten than why.
Intricate in design, disturbing in its explorations of mind and spirit, and with a surprising twist at the end, Ancestral Truths employs a striking narrative voice to explore the shifting relations between belief and truth, love and desire, to reveal that beauty and danger walk hand in hand. Sara Maitland summons her knowledge of theology, mysticism, mathematics, and human nature to give this deeply perceptive novel its wit and cohesive richness. As Ms. Maitland's characters gradually recognize the inseparability of their strengths and weaknesses, the authof of Three Times Table raises her art to a new pitch of excitement and originality.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Amid many ponderous passages, moments of lucidity and beautiful descriptions shine like rare gems in Maitland's ( Three Times Table ) latest. Despite the novel's sluggish progress, these strange, usually mystical scenes compel readers toward the conclusion. Still, those who feel that amnesia long ago wore out its welcome as a plot device will treat this tale with understandable skepticism. As the book opens, Clara Kerslake has just returned to her home in Scotland from Zimbabwe, where she went with her egotistical lover David. She has been found there alone on a mountainside, her right hand mangled; incoherent, she tells her rescuers that she has killed David, yet later has no recollection of the murder. After Clara recuperates and obtains a prosthetic hand, she joins her family at a country retreat where her memory is jogged by various symbolic incidents. The narrative's most engaging element is its supernatural premise--that African ancestral spirits spared Clara's life but took David's because of his hubris--but Maitland buries it among lengthy digressions into the vagaries of Clara's adoptive parents and siblings. This story tries too hard to be a family saga; its insights into awkward disabilities and powerful flashbacks to Africa are far more intriguing.