THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 21, 1996 TAG: 9606210068
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: BY NAN EDGERTON
LENGTH: 56 lines
``TIMEPIECE'' IS the ``prequel'' to Richard Paul Evans' commercially successful first novel, ``The Christmas Box.'' Evans, a devout Mormon who credits divine inspiration in helping him to write ``The Christmas Box,'' presents in ``Timepiece'' a nostalgic and old-fashioned story of domestic life and loss, one based on Mormonism's belief that marriage partners and children are sealed to one another ``not until death, my love, but forever.''
While Evans focused in ``The Christmas Box'' on wealthy widow MaryAnne Parkin's last months, here he goes back eight decades (1908-1988) to tell the story of MaryAnne and her husband, David Parkin, their courtship and marriage, and the loss of their young daughter, Andrea. These events occur again in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Evans' one-dimensional characters inhabit a melodramatic and predictable world.
David, the product of a broken home and now a successful businessman, would like to duplicate the prophet Isaiah's ``biblical miracle of turning back time.'' He collects antique timepieces as a way to reclaim his past and to ``purchase that which all men cannot. Time.''
Lawrence Flake, a black clock repairman, supplies David with timepieces until a wealthy white widow bequeathes Flake ``a beautiful rose-gold wristwatch,'' a gift that leads to a murder charge. When David assumes responsibility for Flake, who kills the widow's nephew in self-defense, he and his family are placed in jeopardy. Andrea, the Parkins' only child, perishes in a fire.
MaryAnne mourns her daughter until she passes the timepiece on to the author's family. As in ``The Christmas Box,'' Evans injects himself in the story. Through thinly veiled religious philosophizing about sacred interconnections between generations and the sanctity of a mother's love, Evans alleviates MaryAnne's despair.
``A love like MaryAnne's, and like mine, could last forever,'' he says when he presents the rose-gold wristwatch to his daughter on the eve of her wedding. Evans interprets the meaning of his guiding symbol, removing all mystery: ``To let go of this world and aspire to something far nobler in a realm that regards no boundaries of time.''
Evans received $4.2 million for a package deal of ``The Christmas Box'' and ``Timepiece.'' Both are short, undemanding ``gift books.'' ``Timepiece,'' in fact, reached booksellers for Mother's Day and Easter gift-giving, and Evans' sentimental tale of love, marriage, motherly devotion and suffering is being marketed as an inspirational story for female readers. It's selling. MEMO: Nan Edgerton is a writer who lives in Virginia Beach. ILLUSTRATION: BOOK REVIEW
"Timepiece"
Author: Richard Paul Evans
Publisher: Simon & Schuster. 236 pp
Price: $18
by CNB