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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An American Tragedy, 30 Jun 2002
This is not just a brave first novel, it is a brave novel full-stop. An atmosphere of foreboding and regret pervades Claudia's recollections from the opening page. As she reveals her past, with particular emphasis on a childhood fraught with the cruelty inflicted upon a "plain" girl, we are engaged by Claudia's quirky disposition and maneuvering intelligence. Growing up in Vermont, Claudia makes her uneasy passage from yearning adolescent to young woman with the help of one undeniable asset: she has been blessed with a beautiful body. Eventually, she snares the object of her longing, a feckless rich kid from Manhattan. Against all odds, she and Dan Dryburgh marry. Dan's mother Ping, a classic of her kind, decides the ugly duckling must be transformed if the young couple are to have the perfect life she imagines. Claudia, to Dan's relief, acquiesces to cosmetic surgery. For Claudia, it is a lonely experience. When Dan's employer offers him a better position in North Carolina, he and Claudia decide to leave the past behind. But, as events unfold in the sleepy southern town, Claudia finds it difficult to shake off the years of unkindness, while Dan revels in a new found sense of superiority. At this point, although the book has been fascinating - MacLeod's vision of the American south is astonishingly fresh - it now takes on a darkly disturbing dimension. Claudia, sensitive to the subtly racist attitudes of her charming new friends, is compelled to explore the shunned world of black sensibility. As she herself once was, her black acquaintances are too often treated with kindly disdain. What Claudia reveals we instinctively know to be true and it is indeed unsettling. The embodiment of these melancholy revelations appears in the form of the inscrutably knowing Calvin Moore. As Claudia and Calvin are drawn together, we sense the dire complications to come. Their imtimacy is mesmerizing. Predictably, the lovers' fate hinges on murder. But MacLeod brilliantly resists all the cliches, and a world of appearances comes tumbling down. With assuredness, MacLeod obliges us to marvel at a society that insists on maintaining such a vast paint-box of grotesquely arbitrary legal procedures, the most grotesque of all being capital punishment. A stunning modern tragedy - wrenching, but not without its tender rewards.
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