Diamant, Anita. Good Harbor

Good Harbor provides a setting that works in this second novel from Anita Diamant. The author writes about the places of Cape Ann, specifically Good Harbor Beach, but also the towns of Gloucester and Rockport, the neighborhoods of Lanesville and Rocky Neck like a painter with a palette that contains vivid tones, shades, and depths of color. I live in Gloucester and her rapturous writing captured the best of the reasons to live there and did justice to the nobility and the mundane routine of the fishing community that pervades that peninsula.

The setting envelopes the novel and provides the metaphor that layers this story of two women who find solace in their newly-sprung friendship and two families who confront sorrow and confusion among themselves and each other. This is a story of surviving breast cancer, of surviving the loss of a child, of the intricacies of marriage and parenting, and of the indelible strength friendship provides.

The older Kathleen and the younger Joyce form a relationship over one summer that mirrors the relationships women form and cultivate throughout their lives. A friendship that reflects the name of the beach that they walk upon--a good harbor that comforts and keeps them from the elements. It also pools over the book with the good harbor that family is, with the comfort that religion can be, and with the emotional and physical release that honest work brings to each of us. Kathleen is a children's librarian, and Joyce a writer. Diamant weaves their professional curiosity, expertise, and professional dilemmas like a motif throughout the book as she explores their career pursuits and the career choices of the men in their lives as well.

The irony of a beach with a dangerous undertow called Good Harbor may be lost on others unfamiliar with this real place, but Diamant does an excellent job of placing her characters on the beach, crossing the sandbar, and reveling in the summer perfection of air, sky, and sea as the deadly potential of the water laps at their feet. After all, we all must find a place amidst the turmoil to find peace and comfort.

This is a gentle book. Not the visceral and heady re-definition of history that she brought to us in The Red Tent; however, this is a smart, often humorous, look at modern life, modern relationships, and modern conflicts. Her descriptions of places like Halibut Point and the view from Salt Island are sweetly poetic and made me regret that I don't experience them myself more often. Her characters are layered. This is a book driven by the characters and setting; her plotting is another facet of both of them and the surprises she gives you are creatively generated as Kathleen discloses her past and Joyce deals with her present. For instance, Joyce paints her new summer home on Smith's Cove, departing from old patterns that kept her safe and discovering new shades and combinations of colors. This parallels her changing life as her adolescent daughter grows distant and her relationship with her husband troubles her. The male characters are real. Both husbands and sons contain complexities and hues. Even the BVM, the Blessed Virgin Mary's statue, has a pivotal role in the book about two Jewish women who are compelled towards this friendship that comforts and defines each of them.

This book will make you pick up the phone, toss off an email, or write a long letter to a friend that you miss. Or better yet, meet her for a walk.

Leane M. Ellis, October 1, 2001.