As the story opens, Lily, the heroine of Timothy Findley's Victorian-Gothic-style novel as seen through the narrative of her son Charlie, is ending her days in an asylum; her life unfolds as a Dickensian tale of deprivation and struggle between the feminine and the coldly masculine, leading to that "madwoman in the attic" denouement. Yet Charlie is reclaiming his mother's life through his loving telling of her story. "She could break your heart with that riveting gaze," he says. Music, vaudeville, and silent movies resonate through the lives in the novel, set in turn-of-the-century Toronto. Findley is a best-selling and award-winning Canadian writer, author of The Wars and Famous Last Words.

From Publishers Weekly
In the genus Novelist, there are several subspecies, including writer, teacher and storyteller. Findley is a storyteller. Winner of numerous honors (including Canada's Governor General's Award for Fiction, for The Wars), he is no spinner of wonderful words but, rather, an extraordinarily gifted teller of tales. As in his several other novels (most recently, Headhunter), here he imagines very particular, not at all common, folk. The focus is on Lily, who spends most of her brief life around the turn of the century touched by a hybrid of epilepsy, insanity and grace. Lily is conceived upon the first and only meeting of her mother, Ede, with an angelic traveling piano salesman named Tom; though fully intending to marry Ede, he dies "in a sea of horses" months before Lily's birth. Within a few years, Ede marries Tom's older brother and transforms into a proper, run-of-the-mill urban matriarch. Before long, Lily's condition is discovered. She is first locked in the attic whenever guests arrive, then sent off to a school for "different" girls?but not before she falls for a reasonable facsimile of her father, a Cinderella-like boy/man, nicknamed Lizzie, who is the much younger brother of Lily's father. Before the novel's end, Lizzie dies as well, as does another Tom, raising the only real problem in this otherwise wholly involving work: that the good too predictably die young. By way of extremely close interior perambulations through his characters in the mind and voice of Lily's son, Charlie, Findley views the image of the general through the lens of the particular, offering everything a reader could want from a vaguely romantic multigenerational saga. Film rights to Whoopi Goldberg. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this new work, a best seller in Findley's native Canada, Charles explores his mother's mysterious past in order to discover the origins of her insanity and the identity of his father. In passages full of vivid images and rich descriptions of the natural landscape, he describes the events surrounding his mother's conception and birth (Ede Kilworth falls for the "piano man" at the Queen's hotel and bears an illegitimate daughter), her madness, and his own experiences with her and with the extended family. While this portion of the book is both compelling and thought-provoking, the narrative begins to ramble as Charles focuses on his quest for his father's identity. The mother's story becomes monotonous, and the result of Charles's quest is anticlimactic. Overall, however, this contemplation of the human condition has much to offer. Recommended for public libraries, especially those collecting Canadian literature.?Rebecca A. Stuhr-Rommereim, Grinnell Coll. Libs., Ia.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Publishers Weekly
Findley is a storyteller . . . extraordinarily gifted.

From AudioFile
At the turn of the century, an independent young Canadian bears the love child of an itinerant piano demonstrator. After the piano man dies, she marries his social-climbing brother, telling him, only after the nuptials, that the child is a pyromaniac. Thus begins a multigenerational saga of crisis after crisis. Classically trained Colm Feore reads in a tone halfway between that of a funeral oration and a soap-opera announcer. Within the confines of that unctuousness, he is expressive enough and even musical in his timing. Y.R. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Seeing Findley's name on a book's cover immediately sends a signal to readers: here's a story that will be provocative and intriguing, beautifully told, and one-of-a-kind. Findley offers both sheer unputdownable entertainment and intelligent, thoughtful writing. His fascination with mental illness has influenced all of his work but is perhaps most apparent in his latest book. Set in turn-of-the-century Canada, the story tells, in a series of evocative flashbacks, the engaging tale of Lily Kilworth and her son, Charlie. Conceived when her mother, Ede, falls in love with a musician, Lily is born in a field of flowers and grows into an odd, lonely child whose world is exotically tip-tilted. As she matures, she becomes more and more alienated from real life, but this doesn't keep her from having a brief, mysterious affair while she's a student in wartime England. The result is her son, Charlie, who has perfect musical pitch and a high tolerance for his mother's eccentric ways. As Lily withdraws further and further from reality, her luminosity and sweetly gentle nature are more affected by the dark demons that inhabit her troubled mind. It is only after her death that Charlie, always Lily's protector and caretaker, is able to tell her story through loving but honest eyes, finding catharsis and hope in the painful but revealing process. Brilliantly told, powerfully affecting--this is certain to be one of the best books of the year. Emily Melton

From Kirkus Reviews
An enticing romantic melodrama--about a beautiful, doomed woman and her varied effects on those who love her and struggle to save her--from Canadian author Findley (Headhunter, 1994; Stones, 1990, etc.). Lily Kilworth is remembered with affectionate wariness by her illegitimate son, Charlie, following her death (in 1939) in a fire in an Ontario asylum. Marshalling his own memories of her, together with information elicited from others, Charlie pieces together his mother's family background and history in a fervent attempt to learn the identity of his father and to understand Lily's mysteriously divided nature. It's a sweeping story, beginning in 1889 with the seduction of Lily's mother Edith (``Ede'') by a traveling piano-salesman, her lover's accidental death, and Ede's later marriage to his brother; the narrative bristles thereafter with a succession of passionate surrenders to impulse, grievous illnesses, untimely deaths, and recurring signs of Lily's ``madness''--in part the inherited ``falling sickness'' (or epilepsy) that keeps her forever on the fringes of respectable society. Life in Canada from the 1890's to the 1930's is evoked in convincing detail, and Findley's characterizations are both effectively specific and satisfyingly opaque. But it's all a bit too self-consciously Bront‰an (there is, in fact, a revealing allusion to this influence in the names given a trio of housemaids). Tramplings by horses, convulsions, brain tumors, premonitions of death by fire, among other excesses, make for an overheated narrative--even granting the central presence of a heroine who once ``absolutely believed Elizabeth Barrett Browning was in possession of her being.'' We feel the fascination Lily Kilworth exerts over people, but we never fully believe the gothic circumstances that overtake them. No great shakes as a literary performance but, nonetheless, a generally absorbing saga that will probably be much in evidence around the beaches this summer. It's a cut above R.F. Delderfield and Daphne du Maurier, and one or two below Jane Eyre. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, a young piano tuner, Charlie Kilworth, faces two enigmatic questions: Who was his father? And, given the madness that consumed his mother, does he dare become a father himself? Drawing on his own memories and the memories of those who knew and loved Lily Kilworth and on the iconic contents of a wicker suitcase she took with her everywhere, Charlie pieces together the story of a vivid, mercurial woman whose madness was both a gift and a curse. Conceived and born in a field of wildflowers and meadow grasses, Lily inhabits an idyllic late-Victorian world until the collision of two forces changes her life forever: she becomes entranced with fire and the terrifying freedom it unleashes in her mind; and, when her mother unexpectedly marries the brother of Lily's dead father, Lily moves with them from her grandparents' farm to the burgeoning metropolis of turn-of-the-century Toronto. As Charlie uncovers the bizarre and triumphant story of his mother, he begins to understand her need to escape, her fear of the voices beckoning from within the flames and her compulsion to heal the walking wounded. When he begins to forgive her for his own childhood, he arrives, finally, at the resolution of his quandaries about fatherhood.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In the genus Novelist, there are several subspecies, including writer, teacher and storyteller. Findley is a storyteller. Winner of numerous honors (including Canada's Governor General's Award for Fiction, for The Wars), he is no spinner of wonderful words but, rather, an extraordinarily gifted teller of tales. As in his several other novels (most recently, Headhunter), here he imagines very particular, not at all common, folk. The focus is on Lily, who spends most of her brief life around the turn of the century touched by a hybrid of epilepsy, insanity and grace. Lily is conceived upon the first and only meeting of her mother, Ede, with an angelic traveling piano salesman named Tom; though fully intending to marry Ede, he dies "in a sea of horses" months before Lily's birth. Within a few years, Ede marries Tom's older brother and transforms into a proper, run-of-the-mill urban matriarch. Before long, Lily's condition is discovered. She is first locked in the attic whenever guests arrive, then sent off to a school for "different" girls-but not before she falls for a reasonable facsimile of her father, a Cinderella-like boy/man, nicknamed Lizzie, who is the much younger brother of Lily's father. Before the novel's end, Lizzie dies as well, as does another Tom, raising the only real problem in this otherwise wholly involving work: that the good too predictably die young. By way of extremely close interior perambulations through his characters in the mind and voice of Lily's son, Charlie, Findley views the image of the general through the lens of the particular, offering everything a reader could want from a vaguely romantic multigenerational saga. Film rights to Whoopi Goldberg. (May)

Library Journal

In this new work, a best seller in Findley's native Canada, Charles explores his mother's mysterious past in order to discover the origins of her insanity and the identity of his father. In passages full of vivid images and rich descriptions of the natural landscape, he describes the events surrounding his mother's conception and birth (Ede Kilworth falls for the "piano man" at the Queen's hotel and bears an illegitimate daughter), her madness, and his own experiences with her and with the extended family. While this portion of the book is both compelling and thought-provoking, the narrative begins to ramble as Charles focuses on his quest for his father's identity. The mother's story becomes monotonous, and the result of Charles's quest is anticlimactic. Overall, however, this contemplation of the human condition has much to offer. Recommended for public libraries, especially those collecting Canadian literature.-Rebecca A. Stuhr-Rommereim, Grinnell Coll. Libs., Ia.

AudioFile

At the turn of the century, an independent young Canadian bears the love child of an itinerant piano demonstrator. After the piano man dies, she marries his social-climbing brother, telling him, only after the nuptials, that the child is a pyromaniac. Thus begins a multigenerational saga of crisis after crisis. Classically trained Colm Feore reads in a tone halfway between that of a funeral oration and a soap-opera announcer. Within the confines of that unctuousness, he is expressive enough and even musical in his timing. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

An enticing romantic melodrama—about a beautiful, doomed woman and her varied effects on those who love her and struggle to save her—from Canadian author Findley (Headhunter, 1994; Stones, 1990, etc.).

Lily Kilworth is remembered with affectionate wariness by her illegitimate son, Charlie, following her death (in 1939) in a fire in an Ontario asylum. Marshalling his own memories of her, together with information elicited from others, Charlie pieces together his mother's family background and history in a fervent attempt to learn the identity of his father and to understand Lily's mysteriously divided nature. It's a sweeping story, beginning in 1889 with the seduction of Lily's mother Edith ("Ede") by a traveling piano-salesman, her lover's accidental death, and Ede's later marriage to his brother; the narrative bristles thereafter with a succession of passionate surrenders to impulse, grievous illnesses, untimely deaths, and recurring signs of Lily's "madness"—in part the inherited "falling sickness" (or epilepsy) that keeps her forever on the fringes of respectable society. Life in Canada from the 1890's to the 1930's is evoked in convincing detail, and Findley's characterizations are both effectively specific and satisfyingly opaque. But it's all a bit too self-consciously Brontëan (there is, in fact, a revealing allusion to this influence in the names given a trio of housemaids). Tramplings by horses, convulsions, brain tumors, premonitions of death by fire, among other excesses, make for an overheated narrative—even granting the central presence of a heroine who once "absolutely believed Elizabeth Barrett Browning was in possession of her being." We feel the fascination Lily Kilworth exerts over people, but we never fully believe the gothic circumstances that overtake them.

No great shakes as a literary performance but, nonetheless, a generally absorbing saga that will probably be much in evidence around the beaches this summer. It's a cut above R.F. Delderfield and Daphne du Maurier, and one or two below Jane Eyre.