William "Belly" O’Leary
has just been released from prison for running an illegal gambling organization
from his bar.  Belly returns to his
hometown of Saratoga Springs and stays with his daughter Nora.  Belly has four daughters, Nora, Ann, Eliza
and Shannon, but Shannon is dead.  We
only find out how she died and how her death changed the family near the end of
the book.  Belly expresses
disappointment with his other girls and their relationships.  Nora and Eliza have marriages that Belly
does not like, and Ann is a lesbian; Belly makes it clear that she is a
sinner. 

This is rich coming from Belly; his
own marriage long ago failed; he is an alcoholic; he was a terrible father; and
he has just spent four years in the state penitentiary.  As soon he regains his freedom, he violates
the terms of his parole by drinking. 
While his daughters struggle to cope with their own lives and try to
help their father, he is ungrateful and uncooperative.  Worse than that, he lies and steals from his
daughters, and he even ruins the party of one of his grandchildren, collapsing
drunk on the floor for all to see.  His
misuse of others is not limited to his family either: he meets a young woman
and somehow establishes a quick connection with her: he has sex with her a few
times, lying to her and leading her on, leading to her inevitable
disappointment and hurt.  Belly is a man
to dislike, and the reader will spend at least half the novel hoping that he
gets his comeuppance. 

Despite Belly’s persistent
failings, he is a charismatic lead character and Belly is a pleasure to
read.  All the characters are quirky and
flawed, and, except for Belly, it is easy to sympathize with their
troubles.  Even Belly has an artificial
hip that gives him a lot of pain, and leads one to feel a little sorry for
him.  Yet it is precisely Belly’s
pig-headed insistence on messing up and refusing to gracefully accept the
advice or kindness of others that makes the novel so interesting.  By the end of the book, Belly comes to
understand how his life came to be as it is, and he redeems himself a little,
which is probably necessary for the novel to come to a satisfying finish.  However, the pleasure of the book does not
depend on this ending; and the book might be more true to life if Belly were
never to make a piece with his daughters. 
What really stands out in the reader’s memory is Belly’s self-righteous
anger and meanness towards his family, and Davis describes this magnificently. 

 © 2005 Christian Perring. All rights
reserved. 

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long
Island. He is also editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His
main research is on philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and
psychology.

Categories: Fiction