What Became of Us tells a
comforting story about a group of three women, Annie, Manon, and Ursula, who
were all at Oxford University together as undergraduates, and who reunite for a
weekend when they are just a year or two short of forty years old.  The reason for the weekend is a sad one —
they are back in Oxford to commemorate the life of their mutual friend Penny,
who recently died after battling cancer. 
They were brought together by Penny in the first place when they were
students, and the all know that if it had not been for Penny, they would never
have even stayed in touch with each other. 

Penny married a younger man, Roy,
and they stayed living in Oxford.  Now
Roy is a widower with two little girls, and Annie has plans to make her move on
Roy now that he is available.  Annie is
by far the most financially successful of the group, since she writes and stars
in her own prime-time TV series, after she spent years as a struggling
actress.  Ursula is Roy’s sister, and
while Annie spent her whole time as a student jumping in and out of bed with
men, Ursula never had any dates, and ended up marrying the first man who asked
her out.  Now she feels stuck in a
boring marriage, and she wants to have some fun.  Manon, who was Penny’s best friend, is the beautiful mystery
woman of the group — she has drifted around from man to man.  Her main accomplishment has been to write a
collection of short stories that won wide critical acclaim, but she still has
no direction in her life.  Her only job
is working as a coat check girl in a nightclub.  But she has an important decision to make since she has just
found out that she is pregnant. 

So the stage is set for this
important weekend, and the story plays out with a fair amount of
predictability.  Parker is a competent
but safe writer, conscious that this sort of plot has been used repeatedly, but
she ready to give it the old college try anyway.  Her protagonists are all likeable in their own ways.  Big-mouthed Annie is the loudest personality
of the group, so the story revolves around her, although Roy, Manon, and even
Penny are actually better drawn characters than Annie.  It is Annie, however, who keeps the tone of
the book fairly light and keeps the plot bouncing along.  Along the way, we learn the well-kept
secrets of each of these women, and the book is well-crafted enough to tie up
all the loose ends by the last page. 
The insights into human nature, middle-age, and grief seem rather
shallow — boiling down to the platitudes that we all do things we regret and
there’s always room for hope and change — but What Became of Us is
nevertheless a satisfying read, especially for Anglophiles.

·         
Buy
the book from Amazon.co.uk

© 2003 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.

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

Categories: Fiction