After a fatal crash

Press, 14 April 1984, Page 20

After a fatal crash

The Far Side of Victory. By Joanne Greenberg. Gollancz, 1983. 250 pp. $28.75. (Reviewed by Ralf Unger) The author’s first book, written under the pseudonym, Hannah Green, was called “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.” It was the acutely sensitive portrayal of a major mental breakdown and its alleviation. Seven books later, the present novel still preserves the theme of the outward intertwining of lives and the inner isolation of individuals from each other. An intoxicated playboy, additionally high on drugs and the sniffing of nitrous oxide, crashes his car into a family in another vehicle and wipes out all but the woman. Convicted, but lightly sentenced, due to family influence, he settles in a small town in Colorado where the crash occurred and makes a life for himself as a county engineer. The woman who survived in the

other car is similarly drawn towards the locality and the two meet again and join their lives together. The subsequent development of their relationship over the next 13 years becomes a series of interlocking questions with alternative answers of increasing mystery. The final resolution is undtamatic, but makes complete psychological sense. Miss Greenberg delights in descriptions of the designing of ski fields in the Colorado region, the pressure felt through muscles of flat skis against the curving surface of the mountain, and the fluid turns when weight distribution and conditions are just right in balance with gravity. She is also expert at probing at the quiet, shifting planes of thought within the mind of each individual. But she is a little uncomfortable when it comes to the interaction of friendship, and love, and passion. The result is a novel of above average interest, annoying to put down before it is finally unfolded.