Nursing her grief silently, she dreams of her beloved mother lost in the chaos of New York, and she worries loyally about her father. Loveless and unlovely life with courage and heartbreaking tenacity.
Plucky little Maura, on the other hand, left behind with her bitter maiden aunt Sadie, manages her suddenly More important, the story focuses on the two characters - Edward and Sylvia - whose actions may determine the outcome but who interest us the least. To commune with herself'' Edward ''couldn't access what he'd been thinking.'' Describing her characters' sensibilities, she falls into mid- and late-20th-century vernacular: Edward ''didn't want to bad-mouth Fitzgibbon'' Sylvia seeks ''an opportunity Rossi's characters live alongside rather than within the currents of their time. Edward refers to his adopted city, Paterson, N.J., as ''havingĪ bit of a hard time'' there is a brief, elided discussion of the Troubles in Ireland Fitzgibbon has reorganized his mill, and the job he finds the penniless Edward is federally financed - but otherwise And yet the story occupies a sort of historical limbo. Mill at risk of going under and waves of immigrants crowding into the Lower East Side. As Edward's new, adulterous romance with Sylvia unfolds, we are still in it, with huge enterprises like Fitzgibbon's silk-dyeing When Edward and Agnes first came to New York, the United States - and Ireland - were headed for the Depression. But such verisimilitude can prove a hindrance to dynamic storytelling, especially when nothing seems to be at stake in these lovingly drawn particulars. Despite the usual disclaimers, we never doubt likenesses - Sylvia's plumpness and eye for interior decorating, Edward's vacillating ambition, Fitzgibbon'sīusiness acumen, the small stature of Sylvia's wealthy father. His patron Fitzgibbon's wife, Sylvia and various minor characters, ''The Houseguest'' would seem to have all the ingredients for a complex story of the dislocation, loss and recovery that markīoth the immigrant experience and the Great Depression.īut ''The Houseguest'' never cuts loose its biographical underpinnings. Told from the points of view of Edward his daughter, Maura His tubercular wife, Agnes, back to Ireland to die and then leaves his 6-year-old daughter behind when he returns to the United States to make a new life. From family facts and lore, she has pieced together the fictional story of Edward Devlin, engineer and former Irish revolutionary, who brings Immigrants who came to the East Coast during the 1920's and 30's. Or Agnes Rossi, the path to creating her historical novel, ''The Houseguest,'' is peopled by members of her own family, Irish
In this novel, an Irishman heads for America but leaves his daughter behind.
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