A Week in South Dakota - Hardcover

These two books are similar in theme and style but not in quality. The novel, The Second Bridge, shows the domestic troubles of Bill and Jay Rau, which include the loss of their daughter, Jenny, killed in a fire that destroys their home. The blaze is one of the book's fine climactic scenesbut the best scene is that culminating in a superbly rendered Michigan snowstorm in which Bill finds his wife lost by the "second bridge" (a symbol of hope on a previous visit), attempting to bury their daughter's ashes. The gripping blizzard scene also appears in one story in A Week in South Dakota and is by far the best writing in an uneven collection. Gildner is concerned with the "Tornadoes" that clip through lives, leaving damage and death, and individual "History," as a man broods over his family and the jigsaw puzzle in front of him. But Gildner's descriptive style is much more effective in the novel, and the Raus, slipping on rocks by the Scottish seacoast at its end, are much more sympathetic characters. Peter Bricklebank, English Dept., City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.