THE GUEST BOOK, by Sarah Blake

Literature -- 4 stars



In the early 20th Century, the Miltons, one of Manhattan's privileged families, purchase an island off the coast of Maine.  That begins a parade of family memories where joys, sorrows, and prejudices form the legacy that runs through three decades of casual opulence before hitting a wall and a reckoning.  From Nazi Germany, where there is money to be made if you don't look too closely, to the economic juggernaut of the post-WWII years, to the seeds of America's cultural revolution in the late 1950s, the Miltons are a family where talk is valued--as long as you don't step outside your "place." ----- Almost as soon as beginning this book, I stopped and wrote a note to myself: "too flowery."  But it didn't take long to revise that to "extravagant."  In Ms. Blake's descriptions of people, of places, of attitudes she uses a rich language that forces you to listen to the empty spaces, to hear the colors, to smell the light.  Her world is alive and palpable.  Her characters resonate, they disappoint, they scream for understanding, and disappoint with condemnation, they make you hope.  Of the younger son: "Moss is young.  He has yet to run into the wall inside where a man runs into his own aging face."   But as rich as the writing is, she falls into a trap of allowing her characters' defenses to become too wordy.  They say a lot, most of it is important; and, unfortunately, repetitive.  But then, maybe that is her point--the rich will talk, but they won't hear.  A book to think about.