Healing the Dead
Description
$16.95
ISBN 1-55054-018-1
DDC C813'.54
Author
Publisher
Year
Review
The accidental death by shooting that begins this novel pursues the
central characters for a generation. The Sykes family is a dysfunctional
one, haunted by deaths. When Sykes accidentally shoots and kills another
child in their cellar, the family is torn apart. The daughters rebel
against their parents, damaging themselves in the process; the son can
see and experience life only through his camera; the husband and wife
become estranged. Bailey’s novel follows the family from Toronto in
the 1950s to New York in the 1960s, through a suicide attempt, a teenage
pregnancy, a nervous breakdown, mental illness, and adultery. It is only
after the scene of the shooting that began this train of events is
replayed that the Sykes family can begin to heal itself.
The characters in this novel are emotionally complicated, but Bailey
deftly pins down his specimens and exposes them for the reader to
examine. Healing the Dead is an engrossing but disturbing novel, which
grips the reader from the first page with the intensity of its
characters and its close-up view of emotional instability.