Sign-In
Cart
The Labyrinth Year
Paperback
Series: Mullins Family Saga, Book 2
Publisher Price: $14.99
ISBN13: 9780956476975
Publisher: Hodge Publishing
Published: Jun 8 2017
Pages: 408
Weight: 1.14
Height: 0.91 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
The Labyrinth Year takes place mainly in Oxford, UK, and follows on from Baby, Baby (first in the Mullins Family Saga series), though it can be read as a stand alone novel. Jenny Guthrie Mullins spends a year in self-discovery, feeling her career as a mother-in-science challenged by husband Max (now a GP), whose demanding fundamentalist birth family require loyalties she's not been raised with. Meanwhile her artist step-sister Daisy (Daze) turns up to stir the mix and hunt for her biological mother. It all looks like a hopeless maze: can it actually become a purposeful labyrinth?
Mari Howard continues to use a snappy, economic style, and weave themes of today's cultural dilemmas and diversity, medical science, marriage, relationships, secular and faith beliefs, and the way we can twist them. She introduces the reader to the Mullinses' children, Alice and Zoe, while managing to avoid an over-cute portraiture of pre-schoolers or any sentimental piety at a Retreat Centre. Brief descriptive details reveal that she conjures these portraits from her familiar world.
The action, when moving from the writer's home environment of Oxford, including its canal, Port Meadow, and the Perch Inn, takes us to Northumberland, West Cornwall, and a trip to Yosemite where Jenny has to take the place of her boss, and speak at a conference.
'Once again Mari is prepared to tackle complex subjects with clarity, sensitivity and courage, ' Bridget Plass, author of just re-printed 'The Apple of his Eye', who with husband Adrian runs retreats known for their honesty, thoughtfulness, and wit.
Also in
General Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
John Updike: Novels 1978-1984 (Loa #339): The Coup / Rabbit Is Rich / The Witches of Eastwick
Updike, John
Hardcover
Selected Writings: Robert Musil: Young Torless, Three Women, the Perfecting of a Love, and Other Writings
Agee, Joel
Musil, Robert
Paperback