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Publishers Weekly In 1963,
when poet Barrington was 19, an event sliced her life in two:
the cruise ship Lakonia departed Southampton, England, with her
parents aboard. Three days later, north of Madeira, a fire broke
out, and 131 passengers, including her parents, were left stranded
without lifeboats and drowned. (Her mother had often predicted
she would die at sea, yet Barrington’s
father had been fond of egging his wife into sailing races and
other water sports.) In this accomplished memoir, Barrington
recalls the three years that followed this incident, in which
she fled to a small town in northern Spain; her book doubles
as the lesbian coming-out story of a young woman who must resolve
her truncated relationship with her parents. Flashbacks to a
lonely childhood in which she couldn’t connect with either
parent and particularly despised her “pigheaded” father
give way to a future in which Barrington is finally able to achieve
a degree of resolution around her loss. And as Barrington recounts
her adventures in Catalonia, where she worked as the tour guide
at a busy winery, the narrative reveals the complex ways in which
she began to find, and accept, herself. Throughout, her writing
is superb; she evokes smalltown Spain under Franco in lush detail
with solid philosophical insight into the tragedy that changed
her life: “What I had gleaned form my parents’ death
was not that ships are dangerous, but that what you fear most
is.” Among the growing number of memoirs, this is a gem. |