September 6, 1998
By Mark Lindquist
YOUR BLUE-EYED BOY
By Helen Dunmore
At 38, Simone is a district judge in her native England, a married working mother with
two young children. At 18, she was living in a New England resort called Annassett and
sleeping with a young American named Michael, who took nude photographs of her. She has
not seen Michael in 20 years. When he suddenly begins writing her letters -- and then
turns up in the secluded village near her home -- she assumes he has blackmail in mind.
Michael, however, says he just wants her to come back to America with him. Michael is
crazy, but Simone also seems damaged -- though less severely and less obviously. She has
recently been appointed to the bench, yet does not possess the cold rational powers of a
judge. In fact, she took the job mainly because her husband is on the verge of financial
and emotional ruin. With Michael's reappearance, her life threatens to come entirely
undone. ''Your Blue-Eyed Boy,'' although seemingly meant to be a novel of suspense, is
actually a meditation on the past and loss and how we cope with who we become. Helen
Dunmore (whose previous novel was the well-received ''Talking to the Dead'') writes
gracefully and has an excellent sense of place, but overloads her story with peripheral
detail. By the end, the reader may be skimming pages, but not necessarily to find out what
happens next.
