In Summer Light

Kate Brewer wants 'her own field to plough'. Tired of being catalogued as a part of her father's 'collection' and angry at her family's readiness to make endless emotional adjustments around his absorption in his work, she determines to acquire a project totally her own. Yet her college study of The Tempest brings her, ironically, to the parallels between her father and Prospero. This awareness changes as her understanding of her father - at first resisted - develops through a reappraisal of her motives in opposing him. She sees how her own early success as an artist - passionately wanting to please him - threatened him with a jealousy he had not expected. The book is beautifully layered with exploration - the strands which enrich and explain Kate's increased knowledge of her father and of herself are teased out in the most sensitive way. Unhappily, the many and detailed references to the art world may disenchant the casual reader - it is the more experienced fourth or fifth-year reader who will realise that the delicacy and expressiveness of such language is perfectly suited to the intricacies of the emotional life of young adulthood which O'Neal observes with poignancy and adroitness.