By the Shore
Marion Ettlinger
Craze-y 'bout Galaxy: Hate her résumé but love her novel.
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by Galaxy Craze (Grove/Atlantic, $24)
Though by no means a household name, Galaxy Craze has acted in a Woody Allen film and been the subject of an Interview profile. She roomed with Uma Thurman at boarding school. And, yes, Galaxy Craze is her real name. Faced with this r鳵m鬠literary purists—calloused by the scribblings of glamourpusses like Ethan Hawke, Jewel, and Naomi Campbell—could be forgiven for having qualms about Craze's debut novel, By the Shore. Additional trepidation caused by the fact that it's written from the point of view of a 12-year-old girl is likewise understandable. These skeptics are in for a pleasant shock. By the Shore is astoundingly well-written. Craze doesn't drop topical references, nor does she patronize her narrator as adults taking on a child's voice often do. In fact, she never falters. Except for a couple of mentions of '60s pop stars, the story could be set any time in the past few decades. The girl, May, lives with her younger brother, Eden, in a seaside village that's deserted in the winter. Their mother, Lucy, once led an Absolutely Fabulousstyle life in London, but now runs a small hotel. Isolated from her big-city friends, who call to chatter about boyfriends and parties, Lucy seems to be atoning for her previous haphazard method of child-rearing. The household's off-season routine is disturbed when a pretty young editor, Patricia, and a reserved writer, Rufus, move into the hotel to work on a translation. Rufus and Lucy are drawn to each other, but Patricia's jealousy and a visit from May's long-absent father threatens this tentative friendship.
Meanwhile, May navigates her own stormy sea: adolescence. Common teenage concerns—getting invited to the right parties, wearing the right clothes—loom large. She's moody, and sometimes downright mean, especially to her mother. But Lucy can be equally exasperating. They dance around each other's emotions, as mothers and daughters often do, knowing exactly where to find vulnerable spots. The awkward, confusing period between childhood and adulthood is a well-worn subject, but May's voice is so compelling that it makes her travails seem brand-new. Craze has a particular knack for simple but evocative descriptions: school is "a private park that only certain people have the key to"; giving up a long-treasured wish is "like letting the brightest purple kite fall down from the sky." These precisely crafted images add to the book's classic feel. Confounding the cynics, Craze has created an ageless coming-of-age story.
Jackie McCarthy
The Breaker
by Minette Walters (Putnam, $23.95)
A dead woman's naked, strangled, and raped body washes up on a quiet beach along England's south coast. Hours later, a confused little blond girl is found wandering the streets of a town 20 miles away. As police investigate, they learn that corpse and toddler are mother and daughter: Kate and Hannah Sumner. But they have no idea how the pair became separated. Or why Kate Sumner was killed—apparently on a boat, though she detested sailing—and then tossed into the English Channel, while her child survived unharmed. Anybody who has read British novelist Minette Walters' award-winning previous works (The Ice House, The Sculptress, etc.) knows she prefers her stories full of psychological suspense, her murders sordid and violent, and her characters fraught with weaknesses. The Breaker offers all of those components in a tale with so many deft twists and misconceptions that even as you read the last chapter, you're convinced that Walters hasn't finished suckering you. Suspicion for Kate's murder falls initially on a handsome but feckless young model, Steven Harding, who just happened to be on the scene when the body was discovered, and who had enjoyed a brief fling with Kate that ended sourly. Also under investigation: Kate's older scientist husband William, who was clearly disgusted with his wife's view of marriage as simply a source of respect and material comforts, and whose mere presence in the same room now sends little Hannah into a screaming fit. Does she know something about her mother's death that she isn't telling? The whole setup of this yarn is messy, a solution to the central crime being all mixed up with talk of sexual inadequacies, the smuggling of "legal" contraband, so-called date-rape drugs, and the elastic limits of human cruelty. It doesn't take long to be disgusted with both Harding and the Sumners. And, regrettably, Walters fails to balance them out well with appealing protagonists. Detective Inspector John Galbraith is a gruff figure who finds some of his own doubts about wedded bliss and parenthood reflected in William Sumner. A more youthful country constable, Nick Ingram, is charming for his slow courtship of a comely local divorc饠now distrustful of male admirers, but their romance never quite gels with the rest of this plot. Still, Minette Walters—one among a growing list of wordsmiths intent on bringing new grit to British crime fiction—has a seductive prose style and a skill at building criminal motivations that make her novels as compelling as car wrecks: It's impossible to turn away from the carnage of a resolution that you know lies ahead.
