The Old Romantic

In British writer Louise Dean's latest novel, The Old Romantic, crotchety patriarch Ken Goodyew, convinced that he's dying, reaches out to the scattered members of his family to try to set things right before it's too late. Dean is adept at rendering a quick study, and she wastes no time in establishing her characters and their issues. A major flaw, however, is that those characters never develop much beyond the class type they represent. There's Nick Goodyew, the lawyer who has made good but remains ashamed of his working class background, and his brother Dave, the unfailingly kind family man and alcoholic time bomb. And the women—among them, Nick's long-suffering girlfriend Astrid, and Ken's thick-skinned first wife and true love Pearl—are too often portrayed as sharp-tongued dispensers of wisdom who really just need men in their lives to keep them happy. As the characters head toward the inevitable family reunion at which all the deep-seated truths and hurts come tumbling out, the plot meanders, bringing in more story lines that, though well-drawn, don't add up to much. Dean is a talented writer, and The Old Romantic bears the proof of that. But even talented writers can write disappointing books.