Now here is a book that’s not your usual fare, totally compelling from the first sentence. Daisy Lawrence is a discontented housewife living in 1950s suburban New York. Life isn’t bad, but it hasn’t turned out the way Daisy thought it would either, so when her glamorous friend Irene offers her a chance to play a role in history, she snatches it.
Her job? To play host mother to 18-year-old Keiko Kitigawa, a victim of the Hiroshima atom bomb, chosen by Irene’s do-gooding project to come to America for surgery on her badly scarred face. of course, Daisy would rather be mothering her own children, but fate has worked against her on that count. And Keiko would rather be hosted in oanhattan instead of the urban sprawl of Long Island.
Plus, to Irene’s chagrin, the beautiful young Hiroshima oaiden seems disinclined to talk about the hideous events that left her so badly scarred. That’s putting the people behind the do-gooding project in a very bad mood, to say the least.
Meanwhile, Daisy’s husband, Walter, a disenchanted writer, seems somewhat thrown off course by the arrival of the aloof Keiko, as do the outspoken neighbours. Matters worsen when a strange man starts lurking outside Daisy and Walter’s home.
This is the ocCarthy era, after all. And Walter has secrets. Daisy might be ordinary, but it turns out she is made of pretty stern stuff, beautifully portrayed in this debut novel from Canadian poet and short-story writer Shaena Lambert. Thoroughly recommended.
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