THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507200498
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY MARI LONANO
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
CHOICES
MARY LEE SETTLE
Doubleday. 376 pp. $24.95.
IN HER 13th novel, Choices, Charlottesville's Mary Lee Settle is determined to give us a character, in Melinda Kregg Dunston, who is ``committed'' through 60 tumultuous years of the 20th century to larger issues of her world.
The problem is that we never feel Melinda's commitment, but instead wonder why this woman is traversing the globe in search of - well, that's the real problem - I'm not sure what it is that Melinda is searching for. While I admire Settle's attempt to develop a strong female character who journeys through the major events of this century, the novel is lackluster and its protagonist's motivations unclear.
Choices reminds me of what a writing professor of mine once said about first novels: Most are failures because the novelist tries to incorporate everything he or she knows into one novel. But Settle isn't a first novelist, and when I try to understand what went wrong in this one, I keep returning to the dedication page: ``To Southern liberals, past and present, wherever they may be.'' Therein lies the rub.
Melinda Kregg Dunston is 82 years old when the novel opens; she reminisces about her life from the tranquility of her island off the Italian peninsula, bequeathed to her by an aunt who is mentioned briefly. She wanders from her first journey out of her Richmond home in 1931 to her last days in 1993. What could have been a fascinating story of a woman committed to liberal causes is, unfortunately, a hastily constructed narrative of a woman who never seemed to have ``chosen'' her paths in life.
Settle has researched the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the U.S. civil rights movement, but she doesn't capture history's fervor. Melinda starts working for the Red Cross in Kentucky during the coal strikes, and all the themes are detailed: the poverty, the abuse of the workers, the fight to unionize, the battles that continue to scar the coal lands of that part of the South. But we don't feel these horrors.
Melinda is a debutante, raised with all those Southern rules we have come to know so well from Settle's other novels. And while we are told that Melinda makes decisions to help people, we don't experience any of her compassion.
After Kentucky, Melinda, apparently for lack of anything better to do, joins the Popular Front and goes to Spain to fight Franco. It is here that she meets Tye, her husband and the major love of her life.
During the Spanish sojourn, we meet dozens of characters, all of whom come and go and never leave much of an impression. After Spain, Tye and Melinda move to London, and World War II promptly breaks out. Another cause for Melinda, but again, she is swept into a volunteer position, rather than choosing it. When Tye's brother is killed in the war, the narrator informs us: ``Ewen had been killed at Arnhem. He had left them the house.'' Oh. Throughout the narrator seems disconnected from the story and the characters.
Settle knows the South, and while even this section of the novel doesn't succeed, there are glimpses of the fine author she has been, as Melinda travels through the region trying to discover the fate of her freedom-fighting cousin.
I wanted to know these people; I wanted to care. But there is no conviction here. Settle tries to write about every enormous change that has occurred from 1930 to the present, from a liberal's point of view, but she can't make the events that must be dear to her heart come to life. MEMO: Mari LoNano is a poet and part-time graduate student in the American
Studies program at the College of William and Mary. ILLUSTRATION: Jacket photos from BETTMANN ARCHIVES, WESTLIGHT AND COLORSPACE
by CNB