THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 2, 1994 TAG: 9410020280
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY PEGGY DEANS EARLE
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
SHELTER
JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS
Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence. 279 pp. $21.95.
To say that Jayne Anne Phillips' second novel, Shelter, is about the loss of innocence is to say that John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is about a road trip.
Shelter, which arrives 10 years after the West Virginia author's highly praised Machine Dreams, is a rich, dark, mesmerizing experience. The five children on whom the story centers do indeed go through indelibly traumatic events during the steamy summer of 1963. But none of them could be called innocent.
The setting is a Girl Guides camp in the woods of Gaither in Shelter County, W.Va. Fifteen-year-old Lenny; her 11-year-old sister, Alma; Buddy, the 8-year-old son of the camp cook; and Parson, an ex-convict who lays pipe for the camp, tell the story.
Camp Shelter is a quirky place. Its director, Mrs. T., the regional secretary for the Daughters of the American Revolution, conducts daily heritage classes during which she propounds anti-communist rhetoric: `` `It's a fact,' said Mrs. T. quietly. ``I've told you before and it's true: the furnace of the Russian embassy burns at temperatures hot enough to cremate human bones.' ''
While the girls disregard much of Mrs. T.'s paranoia, they find one aspect of it relevant to their own experience: ``. . . no grownup had ever said before that there were secrets everywhere, dangerous secrets someone should do something about.''
A place of little privacy where the tents never close all the way, the camp is virtually bursting with secrets: daring secrets of first-time erotic adventures; grown-up secrets of past illicit affairs and terrible, dark secrets of familial sexual abuse. But the deepest, most profound secret of the summer is one shared by the five children - and this is a secret that must be kept for a lifetime.
Besides Lenny, Alma and Buddy, the conspirators include Lenny's best friend, Cap, a rich girl who joins her in forbidden evening swims at nearby Turtle Hole; and Alma's pal Delia, who sleepwalks - a disturbing symptom of the grief she feels over her father's recent death. Though his death was ruled an accident, Alma is sure Delia's father, distraught over the doomed affair he'd been having with Alma's mother, deliberately drove his car off a bridge. Alma should know; her mother used her as both a confidante and an alibi in her illicit rendezvous.
Buddy's father, Carmody, served prison time with Parson, a strange, delusional religious fanatic. While in prison, Parson decided that Carmody was the embodiment of evil, if not the devil himself. Carmody actually comes pretty close, having beaten his mother nearly to death and returning home only to terrify and brutalize his family. At the behest of the spirits and demons who keep him company, Parson followed Carmody to Gaither, where he plans to dispense divine justice and arrive at a state of grace.
From his shack, Parson obsesses about his mission, while he watches the goings-on at Turtle Hole. He witnesses a sexual encounter among Lenny, Cap and a young camp employee and becomes entranced by Lenny, whom he decides is a magical fish-girl.
The lives of these characters come together dramatically - but as the suspense builds and the manner of their connection seems predictable, the outcome is astounding.
Phillips can lull you into a trance with dreamy stream-of-consciousness, then take your breath away with scenes of stark perversity. As with Lenny's memory of an incident at a drive-in movie, where she sees a man masturbating. Or the description of sexual torments endured by Buddy at the hands of his father. These scenes may be physically sickening, but they become unforgettably vivid when contrasted with frequent passages of haunting, ethereal beauty.
Similarly, what may at first appear to be a story about lost innocence at a summer camp takes on almost mythic proportions as the children go, both figuratively and literally, into a hellish underworld. Their ability to find their way back out again is nothing short of glorious.
Although there are vast areas of darkness in Shelter, there is light at the end of the tunnel. And, if it is about nothing else, this extraordinary book is about hope. MEMO: Peggy Deans Earle is a staff librarian. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
JERRY BAUER
Ten years after Jayne Anne Phillips' highly acclaimed first novel,
``Machine Dreams,'' comes the haunting ``Shelter.''
by CNB