The vinegar jar - Hardcover

Doherty's first fiction for adults (she's a two-time winner of Britain's Carnegie Medal for children's literature) draws on her familiar theme of emotional abandonment but adds sexual repression, superstition, and madness to the mix. The story, set in an economically and spiritually impoverished Ireland, deals with the hard life of Rose Waterhouse. When she's eight years old, her imaginative older brother Desmond dies, and when she's 15, her dull-spirited parents, still grief-stricken, relocate, indifferently leaving Rose behind. Rose moves in with a friend and learns typing; then, at 18, she meets a handsome nightclub performer, has sex with him, swiftly falls in love, and moves into his grumpy, incontinent old grandmother's house. Soon the performer abandons her, but by then she's already caring for his baby by another woman, and when she leaves, she takes the baby with her. Before long, though, Rose realizes she'll have to find the baby a father (i.e., a means of support) and plots to marry sexless, shuffling Gordon, the middle-aged brother of the owner of the boardinghouse where she stays; Gordon possesses a job, stability, and a suburban house. But she also requires sex, and Gordon won't sleep with her, so the drama begins: next door to Gordon's house lives a hunchback named Paedric, a gothic gnome with a fevered imagination. As Rose's abducted ``son'' Edmund grows from a baby into a fat, unhappy child, Rose and Paedric spend their time spinning ever more elaborate tales of lust and adventure, eventually conceiving an imaginary baby of their own; meanwhile, Rose, in erotic rapture that seemingly approaches madness, increasingly neglects and mistreats Edmund and profoundly alienates frigid Gordon, who soon deserts her. Finally, Rose, rejected by Paedric, haunted by Edmund, runs away and starts over again, as she did at age 15. Rich in imagery, full of atmosphere, and certainly consistent with Doherty's earlier writing about orphans and unstable families- -but dour, rather cryptic, and uninvolving. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Berlie Doherty is best known as a children's author, and her first novel for adults has the otherworldly air of a creepy bedtime story. Unhappy and lonely, Rose Doran makes the mistake of falling in love with William, a glamorous young tap dancer whose hair is "as shiny as his shoes." Rose moves in with William, his mother and a baby that may or may not be his. But before long, the feckless hoofer dances off into the arms of a red-haired cinema usherette. Rose grabs the baby, Edmund, and soon settles into a sexless marriage with a man twice her age, the dull and steady Gordon. Isolated and craving affection, Rose turns to her next-door neighbor, Paedric, an eccentric "gnome-like, bright-eyed man." The plot becomes progressively darker and weirder as the two trade stories and Rose is pulled deeper and deeper into Paedric's parallel universe, gradually losing her grip on reality. Doherty's drama of codependent fantasy life perfectly replicates the foreboding quality of so many classic fairy tales, but it contains little of the beauty. She works traditional folk tales into her narrative at every turn, blurring the line between her story and all the stories that have come before. Frustrated by bleak reality, Rose submerges herself in make-believe, but Doherty's grim tale is a haunting reminder that the imagination isn't always the sanctuary it appears to be. Some dreams end badly.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.