Synopses & Reviews
Joanna Scott's first novel,
Fading, My Parmacheene Belle (1987), available for the first time in paperback, is one of the most strangely compelling love stories in contemporary fiction. The narrator is a crusty old fisherman and widower who is outraged and bewildered by the death of his "Parmacheene Belle," his wife for fifty-three battle-torn years of marriage. ("She was what we call a Parmacheene Bellethis is the most taking fly, made of feather and belly fin in the old-fashioned way....A Parmacheene Belle draws the biggest fish and this is no secret.")
After her funeral, the old man attacks his idiot son in a fit of fury and flees to the woods, convinced he has committed murder. There, he joins forces with a fifteen-year-old waif, and together the aged angler and his unlikely female companion travel across the country to his wife's native coast. Their journey has a dreamlike quality as the old man's musings on his past and on the blighted modern world, shot through with his unique store of fisherman's wisdom, blur the boundaries between fantasy, memory, and reality. As he reaches his wife's homeland, the old man's rage gives way to reflection, and he begins at last to come to terms with the pain of his losshis "mad eloquence" (The New York Times)all the while reminding us of no one as much as King Lear.
Review
"A blend of the bucolic and the biblical, it achieves its own peculiar tragicomic vision....Scott's unusual imagination promises a rich future in writing." The New York Times
Review
"What sets Joanna Scott's novel apart from the rest is its particularity, its emotional intensity, and its extraordinary language...a virtuoso performance." The Chicago Tribune
About the Author
Joanna Scott is the author of three other novels: The Closest Possible Union, Arrogance, and The Manikin; and a collection of stories, Various Antidotes.