A Dangerous Age

March 31, 2008
In the latest from Gilchrist—who won the National Book Award for the 1984 story collection Victory over Japan
—the grand Raleigh, N.C., wedding between Winifred “Winnie” Hand Abadie and Charles Kane is canceled when Charles perishes in the World Trade Center attacks. Winnie becomes despondent, and well-intentioned cousin Louise Hand Healy, a producer of TV documentaries, goads her to move in with her in Washington, D.C. Another cousin, Olivia Hand, is deeply committed to her job as editor of a Tulsa, Okla., newspaper and is torn between two men she loves. Gilchrist shifts uneasily among the three women's perspectives, and between the first and third person. The political commitment underscoring the novel, particularly in Olivia's scathing antiwar editorials, is deeply felt, and a nice twist is introduced when, on September 12, Charles's twin cousins, Carl and Brian, join the Marines. Gilchrist never quite brings the three female leads into narrative harmony, but she makes the age's dangers palpable.

December 15, 2007
Gilchrist here returns to the wealthy Hands of North Carolina, introduced in "The Anna Papers" and "I Cannot Get You Close Enough". As they approach middle age, the youngish members of the clan are forced to confront national catastrophe, starting when Winifred Hand's fiancé, Charles, dies in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Heartbreak and grief bring on extreme expressions of patriotism and controversial life changes, as when two Hand women become lovers of Charles's much younger twin cousins, both marines, after one of the men is wounded badly in Iraq. The main emphasis is on the fortunes of half-Cherokee Olivia de Havilland Hand, now a successful (and pregnant) Tulsa, OK, newspaper editor, who struggles with inner conflicts as her new reservist husband, the love of her life, leaves for active duty. Quirky relatives from all sides of the extended family do their best to help in 17 tragicomic chapters narrated in the author's characteristically fine prose and populated by flawed but sympathetic and believable characters. Recommended.Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2008
Beloved southern fiction writer Gilchrist returns with her first novel since Sarah Conley (1997), andthe legion of fans who appreciate her propensity for using recurrent characterswill enjoy the reappearance of the extensive Hand family of North Carolina and Oklahoma. The focus is on three cousins, women, who face making greatly important career and personalmaritalchoices against the ubiquitous, unavoidable backdrop of the Iraq War and the terrorist conditions prevalent in the post-9/11 world. Gilchrist brings these three characters into full individual realization while simultaneously connecting them to the bigger pattern that is their shared family history and also to the even bigger nationaleventthat fractured lives.The novelsopening event, a wedding, which was to gather all the Hands together, is canceled when the bridegroom perishes in the collapse of the World Trade Center only three months before the nuptials were scheduled to take place. The ripple effect of this family tragedy, and the continued impact of the war in Iraq, on the three cousins lives gives this novel a humanity easily embraced by the reader.Gilchrists trademark supple prose and droll sense of humor are on full display.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)