Lily and Jane Webb enjoyed an idyllic childhood. Raised by liberal, progressive Catholic parents, the girls are inducted into the worlds of science, art, literature and religion. Their mother is a beacon and the ballast to their lives. When their mother dies at a young age, both girls are devastated and affected in very different ways.
Lily falls in love with a boy while at high school. Yes, he doesn’t have a name, nor a capital letter; he is just ‘boy’. This will be excellent discussion fodder for book clubs. The boy is a star football player and destined for a great career.
A horrific incident during a beach party soon after their high school graduation changes the course of many lives, none more so than Lily and the boy. Apart and no longer in contact, Lily begins her journey to adulthood within driving distance of her old town. Jane, on the other hand, implodes dramatically.
A mathematics prodigy, she abandons prestigious post-graduate work at Yale University and moves to Santa Cruz to work as a waitress during the day, a talented student by night and a full-time drug addict. A love of birds brings Lily to the attention of Marshall Middleton, older than her and from an old wealthy New York family. First her professor, he later becomes her husband. Lily enters marriage with one eye on her past love, boy, and one eye on the future with Marshall. Her feminist mother taught her women could do anything, and Lily took those lessons to heart.
Laws of Love and Logic is a confident debut. Curtis plays it safe and the narrative does not fully engage with the controversial and interesting themes raised. The ending may divide readers and, hopefully, encourage debate.
Reviewed by Susan Gorgioski
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Debra Curtis is a retired professor of cultural anthropology at Salve Regina University, where she specialized in gender and sexuality. Laws of Love and Logic is her first novel.
She is the mother of grown-up twin girls and lives in Rhode Island with her husband and her English bulldog, Harry, who is the star of much of her TikTok content.
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