TEST
“Her isolation, the result of being honest with no one, was beginning to be unbearable… She had never been very good at keeping things to herself, and although she had become a master at it recently, she hated the way it shut her off from other people.”
The heroine of Kiss River thinks those words on page 190, and they sum up my problem with the book. On page 190, almost exactly halfway through, we know (as we have always known) that Gina Higgins has a very big secret. We don’t know what it is. Gina’s hidden motivation doesn’t just isolate her from the other characters in the book, it isolates her from the reader, too.
Gina drives to Kiss River, North Carolina from her home in the Seattle area, sleeping in her car and stealing showers at health clubs that she doesn’t belong to. Her quest is urgent and desperate, and it has something to do with the Kiss River lighthouse. She is shocked to discover that the lighthouse was ruined by a storm ten years ago, and its enormous Fresnel lens now lies at the bottom of the ocean. Gina immediately becomes obsessed with recovering the lens. We don’t know why, but we do know that Gina is also obsessed with the diary of a teenaged girl named Bess Poor, who was the daughter of the Kiss River lighthouse-keeper during World War II. Gina’s story is interleaved with chapters from Bess’s diary.
Gina is befriended by Clay and Lacey O’Neill, a widowed architect and his sister, who are restoring and living in the old lighthouse-keeper’s house. They don’t expect Gina to have any success with raising the lens. Their father, respected pillar of the community Alec O’Neill, wants the lens to stay lost for mysterious reasons of his own, and no one in the area will go against his wishes.
Where are we so far? Alec is blocking restoration of the lighthouse, and we don’t know why. We don’t know what Gina is doing. Then there’s Clay, a handsome widower suffering from depression after the death of his wife. He’s got a secret, too. There are sections from the points of view of all of these characters, but while the author drops hints about the things they’re hiding, we don’t learn the truth about any of them until near the end of the book. Because I felt so closed off from the inner lives of the main characters, I found them boring.
I understand why Gina’s motivation is kept secret – the author reveals just enough to keep us tantalized, and sometimes we can guess what’s going on because of clues planted in Bess Poor’s diary. Gina seems rather distant and I found it hard to get emotionally involved with her quest, but her secrets do create the book’s suspense. On the other hand, there is no reason for all the characters to be so inaccessible to the reader. For instance, a chapter from Clay’s point of view explaining what he’s so tortured about would have gone a long way towards making him more human and likable, and that would have made the whole book far more readable. Alec’s secret doesn’t seem to have anything to do with anything at all. The subplot involving Alec and his daughter Lacey came out of left field at the very end of the book, and didn’t get resolved.
Against all this grim isolation and mystery, the passages from Bess Poor’s diary are truly refreshing. Bess, a bright and complex teenager, confesses all her secrets to her diary, from the petty and childish to the profound. Constantly at odds with her mother and girlishly infatuated with one of the boys in the Coast Guard, Bess is a fully-rounded character and a charming narrator. Seeing the events of World War II through her eyes is by far the best part of this book. Bess gets involved with an exciting and dangerous mystery, and has a tragic, passionate romance. All this, while Gina and Clay are futzing around in the present day, not talking to each other and not being very interesting. I found I had to force myself not to skim Gina and Clay or skip ahead to the next installment of good stuff from Bess.
Kiss River is not a romance novel but an exploration of several complex relationships, and the effect that secrets and mistakes might have on the future. Because of that, it’s much more open-ended than most romances. There is a love story between Gina and Clay, but several issues are unresolved. Though the book ends on an up note, there’s a pervasive sense that tragedy could strike at any time, as it has so frequently in the past. It is a very well-written book, containing several interesting character insights, and in particular the story of Bess Poor is worth reading.
However, because all the main characters (except Bess) seemed so distant and unknowable, I found myself treating Kiss River a bit like a homework assignment. It took a lot longer to read than most books do for me, and while I found it pleasant I did not approach it with joy. Fans of Chamberlain’s introspective, solemn style might enjoy it more.
Grade: C
Book Type: Women's Fiction
Sensuality: Subtle
Review Date: 25/02/03
Publication Date: 2004
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Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.