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It seems almost incomprehensible that a writer of the calibre of Patricia Tyrrell should have gone without formal recognition for as long as she did. She was a septuagenarian before THE PROMISED LAND was the runner-up for the Sagittarius Prize in 2001. THE RECKONING was shortlisted for the Encore Award of 2003. Both books were self-published, the latter with a very limited run of 300 copies. Essentially, THE RECKONING (initially released with the rather less attractive title of THE BONES IN THE WOMB) is a character study of two women, that flesh being draped on the skeleton of the plot. Mind, the skeleton displays signs of osteoporosis in certain areas, but the health of the whole is so good as to ensure the happy survival of the body without medication. The narrative begins with Les, a homeless man, making a telephone call from a public phone booth in New Mexico to a middle-class woman, Janice Wingford, in Virginia. Twelve years previously, Les had kidnapped three-year-old Cate, daughter of Janice and Brad, from their tent at a camp site. He has never divulged the reason for his crime to Cate and the reader remains similarly unenlightened until many pages later. Now Cate is 15 and Les is unable to cope with her because she has, to her own horror, killed a man, a college boy, in circumstances kept unclear, again, until well into the narrative. Les is certain that Janice will immediately recognise Cate and be joyful at her return. Cate knows exactly what her mother is thinking and also how she is telling her estranged husband what is happening, causing a thawing of relations between the two. Except that Janice's reactions are quite different from what is expected. Janice refuses to believe Cate is her daughter when the hard-bitten pair arrive at the maternal residence in a wood. She insists on having DNA tests performed at a distant laboratory -- she has been the victim of impostors previously so is unwilling to make a fool of herself again at a local laboratory -- and only permits her feelings toward her now confirmed daughter to thaw when the results arrive. The author sensitively depicts the shifting parameters of the relationship between mother and daughter as there are more revelations on either side. Presumably in order to maintain the focus of the study on the two women, Tyrrell heartlessly incarcerates Les and forces Brad, Cate's father, to do a runner in preference to seeing the daughter for whose absence he has blamed himself for 12 years. When Cate attempts to lie about the particulars surrounding her own crime, Janice forces the girl to return with her to the home town of the murdered boy. There Janice announces she is, at various times, a writer and an investigator, in order to uncover the exact character of the boy and, in so doing, of her daughter. This is a very moving story of growing love between a mother and estranged daughter. The author deserves wide recognition for her accomplishment. Perhaps publishers will now fight for the privilege to purchase the reported nine unpublished novels for which this writer had previously failed to find a home.
Reviewed by Denise Pickles, August 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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