MADreads

All is not as it seems

January 16th, 2007 Mary K. - Central

Jane Hamilton is one our state’s literary treasures.  From interviews, we know she lives quietly on an apple orchard with her family. (Of course we should not forget that Oprah reading club fame.) 

In her latest title, When Madeline Was Young, the Maciver family described by son Mac from an adult perspective is not quite the family that he thought he had as a child.  Mac has the opportunity to revist his past because of  the death of the son of one of Mac’s cousins in Iraq.  He is now an adult, a doctor and married with his own family and he must decide about attending the funeral.

Madeline, who was treated as another child in the family, was actually his father’s first wife, who had been injured in a bicycle accident.  Even though it is difficult, Mac’s parents Aaron and Julia, and especially Julia, nurse Madeline through illness and temper tantrums and seem to make a happy family for Mac and his sister to grow up in.

This is life in affluent suburbia, very well described.  There is the black housekeeper who has a complicated but loving relationship with the family.  There are the “boyfriends” that Madeline has at various times.  And there are the summers at the family cabin with an large extended family in attendance.

Hamilton has written five books now and they are all very different.  To me that is one of her biggest strengths as an author.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction