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1992-10-19
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BOOKS, Page 67Truth Potion
SLOW POISON
By Sheila Bosworth
Knopf; 322 pages; $21
Do Southern writers have longer memories than other
people, or does it only seem that way? In her second novel,
Sheila Bosworth, a New Orleans native, evokes her home state and
its people with elegiac grace and gusts of humor. The
combination goes down as smoothly as bourbon mixed with bitters
and sugar, a drink that has "the transcendent blend of passion
and troubles and sweet pity."
On a flight from Manhattan to Louisiana, Rory Cade
recounts a family history that echoes the turbulent events of
the '60s. The slow poison of the title is booze; it is also the
ecstasy of love. Both are the straight stuff that delivers
Rory's father to hell. After the mother of his three young
daughters dies, he marries Aimee Desiree, a wild Creole beauty
half his age. The marriage -- and the faithless Aimee Desiree
-- is doomed. She meets her fate at 3 a.m. in a white
Thunderbird hurtling along a narrow causeway across Lake
Pontchartrain. The daughters never hear their father mention her
again, but the moment of her passing envelopes each of them. The
author understands a fundamental truth about Southerners: to
them, she writes, "sweet and sad mean the same thing." Like an
expert mixologist, Bosworth measures out life's sorrow in equal
proportion to its sweetness.
By Emily Mitchell.