The Timeless Moment

Eminently civilized, slightly eerie yet curiously comforting, this is an absorbing debut novel by an English writer. Victoria Norbury, wife of George and mother of Adam, finds herself drawn into the past through her great-grandmother Alice, whose diaries vividly depict the life of a farmer's wife in the latter part of 19th century England. Encouraged to turn the diaries into book form, Vicky is pleased when the two volumes become bestsellers. While she finds herself increasingly engrossed in her great-grandmother's world, Vicky still has to cope with her mortally ill mother, her husband from whom she occasionally feels estranged and her beloved son, soon on his way to boarding school. Other people assume importance in Vicky's lifethe woman who bore her dead brother's child during WW II, the family now living in Alice's farmhouse, the publisher who falls in love with Vicky. Throughout, Vicky's ties to Alice become stronger, and her strange sense of living in both periods is reinforced by some entries in the diaries that seem as though Alice were writing directly to her. Though she achieves success with a novel of her own, tragic events ensue and Vicky slowly works her way to inner peace. Street's prose style is engaging, her characters strongly portrayed. (Jan. )