1992 PEN/Faulkner Award (nominee)
Publisher's Weekly
Morrow's hybrid tale of Freudian psychology and gothic effects is narrated by Grace Brush, a 33-year-old woman traumatized by a childhood marked by migraines and incest.
Library Journal
The interplay between truth and fancy is the focus of Morrow's intriguing, multilayered psychological study. Grace Brush suffers from megrims in both senses of the word--the acute physical pain of the migraine and the psychic pain of random, furtive, unbidden thoughts and feelings that impose themselves upon her. In her migrainous state, the realities of her life take on new dimensions. Thus, an episode of childhood sexual experimentation with a younger brother takes on, after his death, the characteristics of incestuous ravishment. This memory, in turn, influences her response to both husband and lover. It is only one of many branches in this complex tale of a family's struggle to find redemption. Grace may be the most obvious victim, but others suffer too--from the wheeler-dealer father who loves but avoids his children to the older brother whose own fantasies about his sister take concrete form in a pornographic movie. This second novel (following Come Sunday, LJ 4/1/88) is an accomplished work worthy of addition to most collections of serious fiction.-- David Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Peters burg, Fla.
Genre: Mystery
Morrow's hybrid tale of Freudian psychology and gothic effects is narrated by Grace Brush, a 33-year-old woman traumatized by a childhood marked by migraines and incest.
Library Journal
The interplay between truth and fancy is the focus of Morrow's intriguing, multilayered psychological study. Grace Brush suffers from megrims in both senses of the word--the acute physical pain of the migraine and the psychic pain of random, furtive, unbidden thoughts and feelings that impose themselves upon her. In her migrainous state, the realities of her life take on new dimensions. Thus, an episode of childhood sexual experimentation with a younger brother takes on, after his death, the characteristics of incestuous ravishment. This memory, in turn, influences her response to both husband and lover. It is only one of many branches in this complex tale of a family's struggle to find redemption. Grace may be the most obvious victim, but others suffer too--from the wheeler-dealer father who loves but avoids his children to the older brother whose own fantasies about his sister take concrete form in a pornographic movie. This second novel (following Come Sunday, LJ 4/1/88) is an accomplished work worthy of addition to most collections of serious fiction.-- David Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Peters burg, Fla.
Genre: Mystery
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Used availability for Bradford Morrow's The Almanac Branch