Monday, May 12, 2008

MacGregor Tells the World by Elizabeth McKenzie

MacGregor West is a complete lost soul—eternally between jobs, nursing latent abandonment issues, sponging off his cousin while deciding what happens next in life. When his aunt sends him a shoe box filled with his deceased mother’s memorabilia, he notices that a stack of empty envelopes inside that box bear a San Francisco return address of his mother.

After getting these new clues to the mysterious past, he finds the address. There, at the mansion, instead of answers he finds Carolyn Ware. Both of them get infatuated at the first sight. Carolyn, daughter of literary legend Charles Ware, can confirm the envelopes are her father’s stationery, but can’t comment on their significance. The ensuing love affair between Mac and Carolyn provides greater opportunity for Mac to get to know the Ware family, yet the deeper he probes into a possible correlation between his mother and them, the more elusive both Carolyn and answers become. A poster affixed to Carolyn’s wall that Mac’s mother once designed; a photo of Charles and his famed publishing friend with Mac’s mother in the periphery—these reveal a complicity beneath the family’s elegant, wealthy exterior that they all seem determined to hide.

MacGregor, a gifted short story writer, can create a sense of place in just a few lines. It’s pure pleasure to read a writer who not only get her details correct but chooses such evocative, accessible language to paint a picture, such as when Mac nostalgically surveys his cousin’s Redwood City backyard.

Navtej Kohli Profile on Associated Content & Navtej Kohli, CEO of Granox

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