Taking Leave - Hardcover

Shaw, Janet; Wright, Kit

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670800546 ISBN 13: 9780670800544

Publisher: Viking, 1987

Will Brenner, his wife Laura, and Laura's sister Jo find their close-knit lives disturbed when they return from a European vacation and a stranger they had met abroad arrives in town

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From Publishers Weekly:

With the intrusion of a charming stranger into their lives, the bonds keeping the Brenner family together are first stretched to their limits and then tragically broken. Dr. Will Brenner married Laura Hale thinking he could save her from anorexia; because their parents are dead, Laura's teenage sister Jo lives with them. When the three travel to Austria, they meet Thomas Trawick, good-looking but with a mean streak, who pursues Jo back to Chicago. A chain reaction is set off, giving the novel speed and drama: Jo breaks away from her overbearing older sister; Laura and Will realize that they are incapable of helping one another; Will and Jo must confront their mutual attraction. Jo's confused adolescence is well-drawn, but Will's dilemma and its conclusion are cliched. Shaw, author of the short-story collection Some of the Things I Did Not Do, writes with a certain intensity, but the novel as a whole is overwritten, melodramatic and, ultimately, unresolved.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

When they chance to see luscious Jo in her bath, Dr. Will Brenner realizes that his anorexic wife's kid sister is no longer a kid; and Thomas Trawick, obsessed, knows he will follow her from Vienna to Lake Michigan to possess her. Laura Brenner, hungry for excitement if not for food, pursues her sister's suitor. Jo, meanwhile, is satisfied with Kit, the ordinary boyfriend with whom she shares hash and Oreos. Until she kisses Will. This eternal pentagon is solved when Thomas overdoses in despair, and Laura obligingly tumbles over a cliff, leaving Will and Jo alone by the fireside. Recommended as a prime time soap opera pilot, but not as a necessary library purchase. Maurice Taylor, Brunswick Cty. Lib., Southport, N.C.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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