cover image A Comforting Lie

A Comforting Lie

Linda Phillips Ashour. Simon & Schuster, $24 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-684-81834-4

Ashour again describes a modern woman's search for happiness, but the path she illuminates is a dark and uncertain place that few would want to tread. Beautiful, divorced Helen Patterson has a dream job in a California interior design boutique. One day Ray Richards walks into the shop, sweeping Helen off her feet with his charm and apparent tenderness. Ray owns a showplace home in an exclusive enclave, built in the '20s by an eccentric developer over some ocean caves, and he hires her to decorate the place. Soon, she moves in with him despite evidence of his emotional instability, due apparently to the disappearance of his ex-wife and daughter. Meanwhile, Boyd, Helen's ex-husband, and her 15-year-old wrestler son, Lang, realize that Ray is not what he seems, although not even they know how dangerous he is until too late. This languidly paced, strangely affectless story is disturbing, but more for its lack of cohesive in plot than for its emotional impact, which comes too late in the narrative for appropriate effect. With none of the free-wheeling, slightly wacky quality ofAshour's Joy Baby, this novel's tone gets heavier as the book progresses. Ashour is a stylish writer, but the psychological foundations of her characters' conflicts and neuroses remain unclear. Ray lies to Helen about who he really is, and Ashour implies that Helen is somehow at fault for believing him. Though there's a quick cameo featuring Ray's clearly psychotic father, in the end no explanation is given for Ray's monstrous duplicities. That sensitive, troubled Lang is the victim of the adults' manipulations belatedly turns the tale into a wrenching drama that only partially redeems the story with some truths about the responsibilities of parenthood. (July)