Sacred Time : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: fear, recrimination, remorse intertwine in compelling novel
Review: What should a family do when its fabric has been irreparably torn by an unintended tragic accident? Should its members seek to forget and minimize the trauma caused by sudden loss? How can those who suffer from guilt face those who have rage boiling beneath an appearance of acceptance? Ursula Hegi tackles these issues in her compelling and important novel, "Sacred Time," a work which tracks one family's journey through fifty years of suppressed mourning, recrimination and remorse.

Hegi is at her best when she focuses on Anthony Amedeo, who is at the epicenter of tremors unleashed by a fatal accident which he innocently abetted during his Bronx childhood. "Marked and isolated" by his involvement in the accident, suffused with "dread and fear," Anthony's life has been marked by his conscious repudiation of wants. He has concluded that his childhood desire -- for his own space, his own toys, his own personality -- has caused his family to fracture. Confiding to his estranged wife as an adult, Anthony's characterization of himself as "the devil" encapsulates his self-hatred, his suspicion that life offers little to hope for and much to be afraid of.

The loss of his cousin is "one huge ripple -- a tidal wave, rather" that "seized" all the members of his family and "flung" them into a territory where there is "no common focus, only conflicting angles of vision, colliding and aligning" in a "chaotic mosaic." Marraiges crumble; silences replace language, and the children affected by the tragedy struggle to regain their bearings. Anthony's cousin Belinda is haunted by the absence of her twin sister, and it is with great difficulty that she emerges as an intact adult.

Hegi is masterful in her recreation of the Bronx during the McCarthy scare of the early 1950s. Her use of dialogue advances a crisp narrative, and she seems to have a genuinely compassionate sensitivity for the life of a child whose dreams are altered first by family circumstances and then by tragedy. Anthony's mother, Leonora, is by far the most complicated and satisfying of the adult characters of the novel.

Less convincing is the author's treatment of Anthony's aunt Floria. Over one-third of the novel explores her psychological metamorphosis, and much of that simply doesn't work. Floria's extended stay in Italy devolves into maudlin melodrama; her death is depicted in a quasi-Joycean stream of consciousness that is contrived and predictable. Hegi doesn't seem to realize that the greatest strength of "Sacred Time" is its treatment of serious emotional questions through a powerful narrative. When she overwrites or gets bogged down in psychobabble, her novel becomes mundane.

Early in the novel, the child Anthony rejoices at the stories told by his family. His mother and aunt compete to retell, embellish and recreate "one thread of a story and spin it along." With "passion," family members listen, then "leap into a story and spin it along." "Sacred Time" succeeds because it advances Anthony's odyssey through the thread of a story, a thread which finds itself in the lives of the entire Amedeo family. That thread of hidden fear, unspoken grief and unforgiven remorse, when stitched properly, makes this a novel worth reading and remembering.