THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609170509
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY BERNICE GROHSKOPF
LENGTH: 63 lines
SISTER
A. MANETTE ANSAY
Morrow. 228 pp. $24.
A. Manette Ansay's fictional memoir of growing up in Wisconsin records what Holden Caulfield, J.D. Salinger's teenage memoirist, termed, ``my lousy childhood . . . and all that David Copperfield kind of crap.''
The reader is immediately drawn in by the opening: ``If you've never been inside a Catholic church, I'll show you what it's like to go there, believing. faith.''
But Abigail Schiller, the narrator in Sister, does lose her faith, despite her devout mother's efforts. The question of faith runs through this memoir, but is secondary to the main focus of the story, which centers on the sudden, mysterious disappearance of Sam, Abby's younger brother, and the mother's firm belief that he'll return.
In quiet, detached prose, Ansay describes the destructive, overbearing father who controls his wife and daughter. He destroys his son with cruelty and sarcasm from behind the mask of ``concerned'' father, while the devout but ineffective mother looks on.
Ansay's theme is the effect of a bullying father, an analysis of the damage done by a man who deplores his son's preference for drawing pictures to playing baseball, and who tries to twist the boy into a person he can relate to. But the book is also an examination of loss of faith and the reasons for leaving the church.
Sister is divided into five sections covering 20 years; five chapters have appeared as short stories in literary journals, which may account for some repetition, and for the way past and present fuse unexpectedly, confusing the reader.
Throughout the book there is a sense of hovering menace whenever Ansay approaches another description of the father's ``innocent,'' rough wrestlings, or rubbing his heavy beard on the tender skin of his children; his ``hearty'' bone-crushing handshakes, the too-heavy, ``affectionate'' arm on the shoulder, his disproportionate rage when he sees his 10-year-old daughter wearing nail polish.
That fury causes him to do serious injury to her shoulder, after which he removes the nail polish with a dirty, turpentine-soaked rag, then stuffs the rag in her mouth. So vividly and accurately is this father described that any reader who has known such a man may wince at the approach of each episode.
The shift in Sam's character as a result of his father's domination and ridicule is understandable. But the shift in the father, who becomes an eccentric recluse at the end, deranged over his son's disappearance, is incomprehensible.
Abby's loss of faith is also understandable, but it's not clear why she abandons her music as well. The mother, who has stood by passively accepting her husband's treatment of the children, suddenly defies him and embraces women's liberation by going out to find herself a job. Another weakness in the book is that Ansay describes scenes her narrator could not have witnessed.
While Sister has flaws, Ansay, author of Vinegar Hill, is a gifted writer. There is little doubt that by her next book she will have learned to control her material. MEMO: Bernice Grohskopf is a writer who lives in Charlottesville. by CNB