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About
When Frances was twenty-two, she was drifting, scraping by giving English lessons in Mexico, when she met up with a glamorous group of vacationing Americans staying in a mansion on a private beach. Two decades later in rural England, she discovers a love letter from a younger woman addressed to her husband almost at the same time as she learns that she's facing a life-threatening illness.
As her contented existence begins to unravel and she tries to decide how and if she will confront her husband about his infidelity, Frances finds herself haunted by the memory of her heady desert encounter with the charmed circle of the Severance family. That summer in 1976 seemed, until now, like another lifetime. As she recalls this long buried episode from her past, she is forced to face for the first time her own role in an illicit romance and the betrayal and tragedy that marked its ending.
Praise for The View from Here:
"This novel packs a wallop."-Free-Lance Star
"A debut novel that asks the question: Can an adult life well lived cancel early indiscretions?"-Shelf Awareness
Praise for Deborah McKinlay:
"Witty and incisive."-Esquire (UK)
"Irresistible."-Daily Record (Scotland) Deborah McKinlay has published half a dozen nonfiction titles in the UK, and her books have been translated into numerous languages. Her work has appeared in British Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire. She lives in South West England. The View from Here is her first novel. T h e mi dwi n t e r s h e r e are never pale. Paleness
suggests translucence, and our winters are swampy,
no hint of crisp blue overhead. Just now, near
Christmas, there is gray rain and a slip of mud at every
doorway, and I am thinking a great deal about death.
The season, its associations with joy and birth, denies me
the opportunity to speak of such a smothering topic, despite
the circumstances, despite my hope, which is to die, softly and
soon. Of course even once the fresh twelve months is upon
us, I will not express this wish, not in words, at least not to
Phillip or Chloe. I suspect, anyway, that they know and that
it is this knowledge that hushes them sometimes and hurries
them from my presence, though they never confront me with
it, or anything else. I am fragile now, as glass, in their eyes.
No matter the rage of my thoughts.
o n e
• d e b o r a h m c k i n l a y •
2
I remember the pain, the first that signaled this ending. I
remember it quite vividly; it came not long after last Christmas
on a day as dull as this one. Evidently we remember things
because they are anchored in some way, but anchoring is a
weighty concept, and I was, just then, in the grip of something
shrill . . . panic. I was reading a letter.
The letter was signed Josee, like that, with an ee. I knew
who Josee was, but the ee fixated me, since it signaled so
clearly the age of the signer, until the pain interrupted and
shook my concentration for a half beat. Nobody over forty
is called Josee with an ee, are they? Though of course, soon
enough, that must change. As I said, I knew who Josee was,
so her youth was already familiar to me, and had seemed, in
that different context, unremarkable, but at that moment it
glared, suddenly scarlet. I stared at her signature-fat and
a little wild-for a few more unwinding moments, though
it was the line above it that held the real clout, and then
left off the slow distracted pat that my left hand had set up
at my midline, the pain having receded into what doctors
call "discomfort."
I folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. And
I put the envelope back into the drawer of my husband's
desk, Phillip's desk, where I had found it. Where I had gone
looking for it, or something like it-something that would
tell me what it had told me.
I will be forty-six years old next July, if I live until then,
which I doubt. Al
As her contented existence begins to unravel and she tries to decide how and if she will confront her husband about his infidelity, Frances finds herself haunted by the memory of her heady desert encounter with the charmed circle of the Severance family. That summer in 1976 seemed, until now, like another lifetime. As she recalls this long buried episode from her past, she is forced to face for the first time her own role in an illicit romance and the betrayal and tragedy that marked its ending.
Praise for The View from Here:
"This novel packs a wallop."-Free-Lance Star
"A debut novel that asks the question: Can an adult life well lived cancel early indiscretions?"-Shelf Awareness
Praise for Deborah McKinlay:
"Witty and incisive."-Esquire (UK)
"Irresistible."-Daily Record (Scotland) Deborah McKinlay has published half a dozen nonfiction titles in the UK, and her books have been translated into numerous languages. Her work has appeared in British Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire. She lives in South West England. The View from Here is her first novel. T h e mi dwi n t e r s h e r e are never pale. Paleness
suggests translucence, and our winters are swampy,
no hint of crisp blue overhead. Just now, near
Christmas, there is gray rain and a slip of mud at every
doorway, and I am thinking a great deal about death.
The season, its associations with joy and birth, denies me
the opportunity to speak of such a smothering topic, despite
the circumstances, despite my hope, which is to die, softly and
soon. Of course even once the fresh twelve months is upon
us, I will not express this wish, not in words, at least not to
Phillip or Chloe. I suspect, anyway, that they know and that
it is this knowledge that hushes them sometimes and hurries
them from my presence, though they never confront me with
it, or anything else. I am fragile now, as glass, in their eyes.
No matter the rage of my thoughts.
o n e
• d e b o r a h m c k i n l a y •
2
I remember the pain, the first that signaled this ending. I
remember it quite vividly; it came not long after last Christmas
on a day as dull as this one. Evidently we remember things
because they are anchored in some way, but anchoring is a
weighty concept, and I was, just then, in the grip of something
shrill . . . panic. I was reading a letter.
The letter was signed Josee, like that, with an ee. I knew
who Josee was, but the ee fixated me, since it signaled so
clearly the age of the signer, until the pain interrupted and
shook my concentration for a half beat. Nobody over forty
is called Josee with an ee, are they? Though of course, soon
enough, that must change. As I said, I knew who Josee was,
so her youth was already familiar to me, and had seemed, in
that different context, unremarkable, but at that moment it
glared, suddenly scarlet. I stared at her signature-fat and
a little wild-for a few more unwinding moments, though
it was the line above it that held the real clout, and then
left off the slow distracted pat that my left hand had set up
at my midline, the pain having receded into what doctors
call "discomfort."
I folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. And
I put the envelope back into the drawer of my husband's
desk, Phillip's desk, where I had found it. Where I had gone
looking for it, or something like it-something that would
tell me what it had told me.
I will be forty-six years old next July, if I live until then,
which I doubt. Al