| A Review of: Decomposing Maggie by W. P. KinsellaBusy with other projects, I let three weeks go by between reading
this book and beginning the review. I found I couldn't recall a
single thing about it. This did not bode well. I reread the jacket
copy. Oh, yes, a woman denies her dying husband's last wish (one
that could well have gotten her charged as a criminal for helping
him die) then withdraws from life for several years while selfishly
obsessing about building the perfect basket to hold his ashes. She
seriously neglects her teenaged daughter, abandons her friends and
family. Eventually she heads back to the cabin she shared with her
husband on one of the Gulf Islands, along with the ashes, where she
encounters a Harlequin Romance rugged handyman, who brings her back
to life and is so accommodating to this self-absorbed emotional
basket case, that one knows he has to be a fictional creation. The
writing becomes so overwrought it is hard to keep from laughing:
"Maggie took him into her arms. It was like taking in the sea,
the tide rolling into her, filling her with a delicate power. She
drifted, suspended in liquid, her hair flaring out from her head,
each strand undulating like seaweed, gleaming copper against the
blue-green cast of the water. She stole air from the sea like a
fish. They made love in the bed overhanging the cliff and then
slept, the dried salt of sea spray and tears on their faces."
Oy!
|