From age 8 until Curley kisses her, Nancy Hawthorne’s artist father is her teacher, mentor, and companion.
Though Nancy doesn’t want Curley, she knows she wants passionate love.
Soundings: A Novel by A. Hamilton Gibbs
Little, Brown, 1925. 320 pages. 1925 bestseller #1. My grade: B.
To divert her, Jim suggests art study on the Continent.
In Paris, Nancy shares a flat with an American. Cordelia introduces Nancy to her brother, Lloyd, and Lloyd’s best friend at Oxford, Bob Whittaker.
Nancy likes Lloyd but falls hard for Bob. He appears to reciprocate.
When her father is injured in an accident, Nancy rushes back home to Brimble.
Bob doesn’t write.
When Nancy goes to Oxford to find out what’s changed, she finds Bob with another woman.
Nancy devotes herself to painting and to her father, now a paraplegic.
On her 27th birthday, in the midst of World War I, Nancy realizes she wants children. Lloyd’s death in France ends possibility of him as a husband.
Then a changed Bob is temporarily stationed in Brimble.
A. Hamilton Gibbs writes passages of absolutely beautiful prose but leaves gaping holes in character development.
Although the other characters are shown in varied situations, Gibbs rarely shows Bob when he’s not pursuing Nancy. Thus the ending of Soundings leaves a vague sense of distrust that Bob has fundamentally changed.
© 2015 Linda Gorton Aragoni
Photo credit: Babyfoot by johnnyberg @ FreeImages.com
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