GRAY

This debut novel, set in New England and on the Greek island of Naxos, flirts with the bodice-ripper genre but then turns into something far different.

Vera Mine, a young 55, is sitting near her dying father, Warren, in a Massachusetts hospital room in this tale’s opening scene. After an agonizing few days, Warren does die, leaving Vera drained and totally bereft. She is divorced and childless. She loved her husband, Max, but he left her and gained “a stereotypical trophy wife.” (The therapists all agreed that Vera’s resistance to sex was the problem.) Financially well off, she decides to go to Naxos. There, she hopes to recover from her grief and start anew, practicing her painting (she’s a creditable amateur) and remaining open to adventure. Naxos, of course, is that most romantic of places, conjuring up Zorba and numerous Greek island clichés. On the ferry from Athens, she meets the embodiment of it all: Demetri, a kind of dark-haired Greek Fabio. He is friendly; his English is better than her Greek; and he and his wife and children live close to her rented cottage. She is coming back to life and so is her libido. Demetri often comes over (how does he get his farming done?) and asks to borrow her laptop to “check his email.” Greece is grappling with the draconian measures that the European Union put in place to make the country pay off its debts. Demetri often rants about this fraught situation. After some months, the protagonist’s old friend Sean, who, as the buddy convention goes, knows Vera better than she knows herself, pays a visit. He messes around in her laptop and finds that things are very bad (and dangerous) indeed.

Revealing further developments would spoil the story. That said, the ending delivers a delightful twist, an upsetting of expectations worthy of a mordant O. Henry. Roy is a very talented writer, often wickedly so, as when she describes Vera’s ditzy sister and her clueless uncle while Warren is dying (and the outrageous obit that these two write). Or Vera’s face-off with an officious dweeb in a dog park (she usually says fuckonly in her mind, but more and more she is shouting it at people who deserve it, a mark of her coming into her own). There are also moving, poetic passages on such unlikely things as hospital room numbers (“Suddenly, the numbers were briefly serene, leaned toward her, swaying: appealed to her humbly and modestly—gently asked her to stop, to please listen, to pause for a moment and rest, yes, rest”). In addition, the author deftly describes Demetri’s two kids. Vera is very perceptive, and it is clear that Elektra is Demetri’s favorite and that things are not well between Tasso and his father (as readers will see). Vera came to Greece steeped in its mythic history, enamored of Athena’s “metis.” Eventually, she will discover if she shares Athena’s “wisdom and cunning,” as most hold metis to mean. There are epigraphs heading the chapters, which tend to be short, and Roy keeps things moving along briskly. The point of view is Vera’s, third-person limited. Why it is not Vera, first person, will become quite apparent at the very end.

An impressive tale, wonderfully plotted and detailed, about a woman starting over.