Volume 42, Number 9 · May 25, 1995
The Mystery of Innocence
By Hilary Mantel
Felicia's Journey
by William Trevor
Viking, 213 pp., $21.95
Felicia, at seventeen, has not received many compliments from sighted men. She has, her girlfriends say, 'the face for a nun.' Her mother is dead, and she lives in a small Irish town with her father, her brothers, and her great-grandmother, with whom she shares a room. For three months she has been unemployed. She used to work at a canning factory, but it closed down. There's nothing doing at Erin Floor Coverings, or Hickey's Hotel, or Maguire Pigs. The way ahead looks bleak, a continuation of thankless drudgery for her family, her unemployment pay going into the common pot and her personal freedom narrowing to vanishing point.
Review, 3829 words
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