Reviewed by Kate Flatley
for the Wall Street Journal
British writer Jennifer Lash's sixth novel, "Blood Ties," should be looked at as a manual of how *not* to raise children.
Ms. Lash finished this winding tale of an emotionally stunted family shortly before she died of cancer in 1993, and, fortunately for the reading public, this thought provoking book made it into print.
"Blood Ties" is not an easy book to read the prose occasionally plods along without much flair but overall the story is compelling and satisfying. It is the tale of the troubled Farr family and the people who become entwined in their lives. At the center is Violet Farr, the prideful, frosty matron of Rathmanagh, an aging manse at the edge of a small Irish village. She is a well respected by not well liked pillar of the community, unhappily married to the sexually disoriented, ineffectual Cecil.
The Farrs' placid life is disrupted when the unwanted child of their estranged son, Lumsden, is unceremoniously dropped on their doorstop. The nanny raised, boarding-school-educated Lumsden had been viewed as a disappointment and a deviant by his parents, and he acts accordingly. To Violet, the dumping off of the three-year-old boy, Spencer, is the most vile in a long list of Lumsden's sins against her. While the Farrs cloth and feed Spencer out duty, they don't know how to care for the silent, strange boy. They realize only after it is too late that Spencer is the key to their redemption, the chance to change.
The book begins near the end of the Farrs' story, with each chapter filling in history and adding small pieces tot he puzzle and why there is such anger among the characters. The reader gets a clue her and a snatch of information there until the picture of the Farr family is complete.
Ms. Lash has written a vivid, frightening story of cyclical neglect with a delicate hand. Thought her subject is harsh, her writing never is. She is refreshingly restrained in judging her characters, allowing readers to arrive at their own conclusions as they progress through this powerful novel.