Freed, Lynn. The Mirror
When you pick up this innocuously small book, shaped like a personal diary or journal and turn its pages, the sepia script immediately infuses the reader with an intimacy that is also the written style of Freed's simple yet flowing prose.
From 1920 to 1986, the determined story of Agnes La Grange is told in her own hand and voice. This fictional memoir follows Agnes' emigration to South Africa as a housekeeper and in a fresh, practical tone describes what she must do to survive as a woman on her own. Photographs from that time period in South Africa add a layer of verisimilitude that enhances the ambiance of Freed's writing.
Agnes uses her own appreciation of her reflected beauty, and initially her youth, to change her fortunes. Freed matter-of-factly presents Agnes' choices as consequences of her social place and her historical time but with the undercurrent of longing for safety and love always lapping at the edges and in the heart of Agnes' narrative. This book is a poetic, smoothly flowing tale of a woman you will both admire and dislike all at the same time.
Leane M. Ellis, March 3, 1998.
Lucius Beebe Memorial Library - This page last updated 3/04/98 - lme.