Girl Held in Home: NovelTakes place in the months following the 9/11 attack, a period when these national issues are aggravating other, more personal stresses for the Simon family of suburban Arlington. Mom Maura is flailing. More or less relegated to the role of housewife, her latest attempt at independence, a "Songs for Shelters" program, has lost its funding post-9/11. Her husband, Dan, is increasingly absent, and a phone call from a colleague's wife suggests he has been unfaithful, a blow that serves to aggravate Maura's own confusion about her last female friend--and her own lies about her sexual past. Meanwhile, Joezy, the Simon's 15-year-old son, has hit adolesecence hard, and as he rebels against his parent's smothering, Volvo-driving liberalism, he seems to find a cause--and an object of lustful veneration--in the Asian girl who may or may not be enslaved by the Muslim family that has just moved in down the road(from a Boston Globe review by Clea Simon, Nov. 5, 2011). |
