The sunniest neighbourhood... the darkest secrets!
"In a sunny and rich Los Angeles neighbourhood everything seems perfect… perfectly-trimmed lawns, perfect houses, perfect families with perfectly, happy wives. But perfection doesn’t exist and where the sun shines bright the secrets and tragedies are around the corner. It’s in one of these perfectly perfect families that something horrible happens, when Joyce Haney vanishes one summer afternoon. Nobody seems to know what happened, leaving two children and a bloodstain to hide the darkest secrets."
Inga Vesper’s first novel is a mystery that absorbs the reader completely, a page-turning book that tells the story of Joyce Haney and her seemingly perfect life. The Long, Long Afternoon is a story of feminism, femicide, violence, adultery, racism and classism. Set in the sunny California of summer ’59, with this novel all that wasn’t right with America at that time comes to life. Behind that smiling façade of perfect families living the American Dream, there are women silenced and diminished, fighting battles bigger than them, hiding their dreams and feelings. Women scared of showing weakness, scared of saying the wrong thing and the wrong time, scared of claiming what’s theirs. I believe the author did a great job in describing with simple, but strong words, these women, each with her own past and wounds. In particular, the character of Ruby and her “literate” fight against racism has been masterfully written, in my opinion.
Inga Vesper’s first novel is a mystery that absorbs the reader completely, a page-turning book that tells the story of Joyce Haney and her seemingly perfect life. The Long, Long Afternoon is a story of feminism, femicide, violence, adultery, racism and classism. Set in the sunny California of summer ’59, with this novel all that wasn’t right with America at that time comes to life. Behind that smiling façade of perfect families living the American Dream, there are women silenced and diminished, fighting battles bigger than them, hiding their dreams and feelings. Women scared of showing weakness, scared of saying the wrong thing and the wrong time, scared of claiming what’s theirs. I believe the author did a great job in describing with simple, but strong words, these women, each with her own past and wounds. In particular, the character of Ruby and her “literate” fight against racism has been masterfully written, in my opinion.