Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 20, 1993 TAG: 9303200099
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: C12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by JOAN SCHROEDER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
`MIDNIGHT LEMONADE' IS A GOOD, FAST READ
Blacksburg writer Ann Goethe has written a prototypic first novel. "Midnight Lemonade" is a first-person confessional that has "Women's Book" written all over it.Heroine Katherine Pierson spends her adolescence at a Catholic girls' boarding school on the receiving end of decrees like this one: "Any girl who kisses boys is giving her husband a sucked-out orange when she marries." She's smart, experience-hungry and naive as they come, and it's no surprise when she falls in love with an English professor 12 years her senior. Eric, with his silver-streaked hair and roving eye, revels in Katherine's virginity, calling her "Elf Child." Seven months after they marry, their first child is born.
Moving to a small North Carolina college town, Eric and Katherine begin to fall apart as two more children come in rapid succession. Eric succumbs to a series of affairs, while Katherine struggles to keep her family and her mind intact. "I am terrified that I will end up a mindless old lady living to laugh at the jokes the stars tell on `Hollywood Squares,' " she laments.
Interwoven with the story of her deteriorating marriage are the deaths of her parents and the alienation of her sister, Eve. Katherine's trips back home are scattered throughout the novel and are nicely set against the backdrop of Louisiana's environmental degradation. Driving across the Mississippi into Bellebend, Katherine breathes the foul air from the oil refineries and thinks, "If God bothered to look, He'd be really pissed to see what has been done to His Masterpiece."
With the support of her friends and a small newspaper job, Katherine takes her children and leaves her husband and their dream-farmhouse behind. Immediately there is a lover, a competent young man who falls hard for Katherine, three bickering kids and stretch marks included. But it is Ian, a visiting professor at the local college, who captivates Katherine. Ultimately, their affair has painful consequences for both Katherine and her children.
Goethe has a clever voice, a wisecracking smartness that serves her novel very well. And, aside from a somewhat distanced, slow beginning, the storyline moves along at an engaging pace, nicely broken with the back story of Katherine's childhood. It's a good, fast read embued with the virtue of sincerity.
If there is a problem with "Midnight Lemonade," it is one that many first novels share: a certain predictability that nags at the reader, causing her to wonder if, in fact, she hasn't read this novel once (or twice) before.
Telling a story as common as this one - a woman finding her way out of her repressed upbringing and bad marriage - requires pretty fancy footwork. Engaging subplots, exquisite description, or a risky, beautiful resolution can make the difference between a novel you enjoy and a novel you remember.
In "Midnight Lemonade," Goethe has given us a good read. And she's a good enough writer that next time around, we can expect a truly memorable one.
\ AUTHOR Joan Schroeder has a story in the anthology "Life on the Line."