Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 14, 1993 TAG: 9302140255
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by GEOFF SEAMANS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
MCCRUMB RETURNS TO HER LIGHT SIDE
MacPHERSON'S LAMENT. By Sharyn McCrumb. Ballantine. $17.00.In "MacPherson's Lament," Shawsville writer McCrumb brings mystery-solving heroine Elizabeth MacPherson back from the United Kingdom, and returns her to the character's (and the author's) native American South. This serves well McCrumb's piercing yet sympathetic eye for the foibles of middle-class Southern living.
Actually, MacPherson is on home soil only in the latter half of the book. But another of the MacPherson clan - her bumbling brother Bill, a recently pedigreed lawyer with a just-opened practice in Danville - occupies the stage for most of the book, and serves the purpose.
His partner, also recently pedigreed but considerably faster on the uptake, is A.P. Hill, a descendant of the Confederate general and avid re-enactor of Civil War battles. This latter-day Hill, however, is of the female persuasion.
The story involves the sale of the Home for Confederate Women and eviction of its elderly residents, the snookering of Bill by these same steel magnolias, and Elizabeth's rescue of her bemused brother from the legal troubles in which he becomes inadvertently enmeshed. A subplot is the separation of Elizabeth and Bill's parents; Bill - in violation of common sense if not legal canons - has been persuaded to act as his mother's divorce attorney.
As the kind of light entertainment that has earned McCrumb a spot in the national literary landscape, "MacPherson's Lament" is satisfying enough. But the book is also disappointing. The potential depth of some of the themes, and the vividness of some of the characters, left this reader wondering whether light entertainment is too limiting a choice of genre.
Geoff Seamans writes editorials for this newspaper.