Multiple romance, intriguing mystery

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This article was published 24/07/2010 (5851 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Debutante

By Kathleen Tessaro

HarperCollins, 386 pages, $16

Any beach bunny worth her suntan will be burning to get to the final pages of this hyped new work of commercial fiction

Reminiscent of the art movie The Hours, this alternating tale of two groups of Englishwomen from different eras is a multiple romance and an intriguing mystery.

The author, Kathleen Tessaro, is an American living in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, the end of this, her fourth novel, turns out to be partially unsatisfying and her author’s note is too much. It’s feels like going to an entertaining chick flick with an inconvenient truth at the end, plus a history note after to make sure you got it.

But the story opens heatedly like any hot romance, with a prickly pair who want nothing to do with one another.

Protagonist Cate Albion is suffering serious post-affair malaise and has arrived back home in London from New York. The artist bunks with her mom’s sister Rachel, who immediately railroads Cate into going to country estate Endsleigh on the coast of Devon with a handsome widower, to help him value and catalogue the estate.

Jack is in his 40s and is still nursing his wife’s loss, but Cate is a looker. Off they go, purposely ignoring each other, to immerse themselves in the leftovers of the lives of the famous Blythe debutantes from Endsleigh.

Through clues, servants’ confessions and letters, Cate gets to know the famous Blythe debutantes — Irene who just died, and Diana (Baby) who disappeared in 1941.

The Blythe sisters were privileged British upper class, and had enjoyed their social heyday in the late ’20s and ’30s at London balls and extravagant parties on country estates. Irene went on to lead a dour existence, doing great charitable works in the war. But where did Baby go?

Baby’s lost voice comes to us regularly by way of old letters scattered throughout the novel, written to her sensible sister Irene and to Nick, the man she loved.

They appear without explanation. But we read them eagerly as she is rebellious, completely outrageous.

As a young debutante, she writes Rachel in June 1926: "You will be pleased to know I have finally perfected the art of pressing myself up against a man while dancing and at the same time maintaining an expression of complete and utter indifference verging on contempt."

Don’t expect a genteel Old World romance, in either era. The modern characters are plain-speaking and the actions in both eras will leave readers shocked.

At its heart, The Debutante is a mystery. But by the end, we’re desperately hoping for some happy denouement in the two eras. What we’re not expecting is serious social commentary.

Winnipegger Maureen Scurfield writes the Miss Lonelyhearts advice column for the Free Press.