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A recent martyr
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1987
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Publishers Weekly Review
Employing a plot as seemingly trite as: woman loves man; woman leaves man; life goes on, Martin (Set in Motion, Alexandra achieves a memorable novel, redolent with the tropical corruption that is so much a part of the charm of New Orleans. Beneath narrator Emma's description of her affair with Pascal and the self-discoveries it prompts, Martin bares the question of the individual's relationship with God. The affair is a painful one physically, and Emma's discovery of how it has corrupted her morally is paralleled by shocking events in the city: fuel shortages, municipal bankruptcy, garbage strikes, mysterious deaths of rats and humans. During the crisis, Claire D'Anjou, who has been sent home from her convent novitiate because she is ``too fervent,'' touches the lives of Pascal and his family, of Emma and her daughter, and of sundry citizens of New Orleans. Martin's proseclean, precise and to the pointgives much pleasure. Her skill and style lift what might otherwise be a trivial, sensationalist tale into a subtle, witty novel. (May 11) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Like her earlier novels, Set in Motion (1978) and Alexandra (1979), this further excursion into psychic storms seems to feed upon Martin's exotic contemporary New Orleans, with its ""vicious, florid, natural cycles [which] roll over the senses with their lushness."" On an ancient, splintery framework--here, two women represent sacred and profane love--Martin has stretched some lively speculations (perhaps stretched too far) and a mesmerizing landscape of decay and rebirth. Emma, who narrates, is married and mother of a child. She is also the lover of Pascal--who embodies some of the words of the epigraph (quoted from the 17th-century French philosopher): ""That we are in ourselves hateful, reason alone will convince us. . ."" Pascal, the cynic, and Emma, wondering at ""the intensity of my responses,"" ritualize lust, and at one point. Pascal introduces a knife. Was Emma ""more than half in love with death?."" The spiritual twin of Emma is the young postulant Claire, longing for a Divine consummation as Emma aches for a ""profane"" immolation. While Emma and Claire, fast becoming friends, each pursues her lover/ Lover, Pascal, oddly attracted to Claire (who loathes him), seems to hope to prove to himself that she was only ""an ordinary woman."" After the dreadful coming of the bubonic plague to New Orleans (a hellish vision of aberration and decay), both women and Pascal will find in different ways a life-ending resolution: Emma to a ""numb"" Pascal-less life, and Claire to an early martyrdom. Martin's use of theological dialectic and hairsplitting (both shrewd and bantering) is fresh and unforced; and inexplicably, in spite of all the quivers and qualms, one does care about sinner and saint. Spiritual quests set against the slithering gardens of earthly passion. A bit special. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Summary
Valerie Martin's third novel is the story of a deadly love triangle set in New Orleans. Emma Miller, married and the mother of a five-year-old daughter, is obsessed by her increasingly sadomasochistic relationship with Pascal Toussaint, who is himself fixated upon Claire D'Anjou, a young novice with a passion for God so powerful that she has been sent home to New Orleans by the convent for a year's test of her vocation.In a city overrun by rats and awash in a mysterious plague, freedom and the consuming desire for self-sacrifice are pursued to harrowing, ultimately redemptive consequence. New Orleans -- alluring, pleasure-loving, mesmerizing -- remains both a force in its own right and a backdrop to the erotic contests at the center of the novel that established Martin as a major American voice. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
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