Ohio Angels

May 3, 1999
Nostalgia--the longing for a homecoming--draws the heroine of Chessman's lyrical debut back to the past in an Ohio town where time seems to stand still. When Virginia Greaves takes an overdose of sleeping pills, her daughter Hallie, a painter, comes home for a week of intensive soul searching and resumes a relationship with her childhood friend Rose. Hallie has been living in Brooklyn with her architect husband; a series of miscarriages has left her physically and emotionally drained. Back in her childhood home, she can't escape memories of her mother's ongoing struggle with depression and the stability she found at Rose's house. Time slips, and Hallie finds herself turning once again to Rose, who is expecting her third child and still living in the house where she grew up, haunted by the ghosts of her dead parents. Telling Hallie's story from several points of view, Chessman allows other characters to reveal their own hidden sadnesses and the sometimes oblique and pervasive effect these have on Hallie's life. Chessman's descriptions of life-altering events like the stillbirth of Virginia's second child (never revealed to Hallie) are passionate and chilling: "I shook like a tree in a hurricane, and I said, Let me hold him, and when they had wrapped him in a blanket and I held him, he shook with me, two creatures in a high wind." The losses suffered by Chessman's characters--greatest among these, the disintegration of married love--throw the emotional progress each makes into sharp relief. With gentle intelligence and the odd yet poetic accuracy of her prose, Chessman brings Hallie to recognize that opening up the chambers of the past is the only way to move on.

November 15, 2004
Hallie's mother suffers from severe depression and has not left her room for months. Her father, a doctor close to retirement, patiently takes on the cooking, shopping, and cleaning. Hallie decides a visit to the Ohio homestead is in order. While home, Hallie reconnects with her childhood friend Rose, who seems to have everything-a loving husband, healthy children, and a big house-and this sets Hallie to thinking. Just before Hallie is to return to New York, her mother takes an overdose of sleeping pills, and Hallie uncovers the secret that lies at the root of her mother's malaise. Chessman captures the inner workings of the mind and the processes by which decisions are made. Her prose, well read by Norma Lana, is thoughtful, and her characters are beautifully constructed. Recommended.-Joanna M. Burkhardt, Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Univ. of Rhode Island, Providence

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 30, 2002
Chessman's second novel is a lyrical but rather glum and shapeless examination of the secrets and traumas of two suburban families. Hallie, an insecure painter living with her architect husband in Brooklyn, returns to her parents' home for a visit. She is concerned about her mother, Virginia, who has been "low" for as long as she can remember, but who now refuses to leave her bed. Her father, Charles, a doctor, tries to make the best of things, despite the haze of inertia and casual cruelty that hangs over the marriage. (Virginia at one point wonders, "Why should I open my eyes, when I know precisely what he will look like?") Hallie's childhood friend Rose, "would-be writer, plump woman, plumped down in the middle of the slow state of Ohio," is the matriarch of a chaotic but loving household. Redheaded and pregnant with her third child, she is the antithesis of wan Hallie, who, after five miscarriages, has given up on motherhood. Nevertheless, the two reconnect and share memories—some idyllic, some sinister—of their childhood together and of their respective families. When Virginia takes an overdose of sleeping pills, Hallie inadvertently discovers the source of her mother's depression. Chessman (Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper) is adept at setting a mood, but she too often allows her lyricism to lapse into preciousness, and for every beautiful image, there is a dull, superfluous one waiting to nullify it. By novel's end, plot and characters alike are all but lost in a stew of flashbacks and dreams. (Oct. 7)Forecast:Chessman's first novel (a #1 Book Sense pick) was a favorite of independent booksellers, so sales of her second should be respectable, even if the final verdict is less favorable.