At villa, things go from bad to verse

June 10, 2007|Diane White

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Anthony's first wife, Amanda, is a dazzling free spirit . Shortly after their daughter, Jasmine, is born Amanda runs off, leaving him the baby. Sandra, the nanny he hires to care for Jasmine, becomes his second wife, bringing order to his life and bearing two children. The marriage endures until Anthony's acupuncturist-mistress, Nula, turns up in the middle of a village cricket match to introduce him to their infant daughter, Gaia. The third wife, Dita, is a monster, a money-mad social climber who adds an introverted stepdaughter and a criminal stepson to the Anscombe family before giving birth to Anthony's son.

Anthony stumbles from one catastrophe to another, baffled by his own inability to manage his life. His fatal flaw may be that he means well. Coleridge skillfully handles a small army of sharply drawn characters, none of them sympathetic, Anthony included. His narrative style is straightforward; he has a real talent for humor, delivered in a deadpan fashion. And he has an eye for little details that reveal character, for example, Dita's table decorations for a simple family Christmas lunch: "Meticulously arranged down the middle of the table were two dozen pomegranates, spray-painted gold, with a pyramid of ten more as a centerpiece. The cutlery for each place setting was flamboyantly tied up in pussycat bows of gold ribbon and lace."

Diane White writes every month about new light and popular fiction.