Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden

From Library Journal On a hot, sultry, August day in 1892 Lizzie Borden allegedly took an axe and "gave her mother 40 whacks." Using the meager historical knowledge on Borden, mostly gained from trial transcripts and newspaper articles, Engstrom ( When Darkness Loves Us , LJ 2/1/85) has woven a fascinating, fresh tale of a lonely, tormented, and frustrated young woman. As Engstrom probes for a motive in the murder, she examines Lizzie's psyche and her role in her dysfunctional family. Raised by an austere older sister and her emotionally grasping but parsimonious father, she ignores her overweight, foodaholic stepmother. Seeking comfort and a sense of self, she finds temporary solace in brief relationships with women. Her father's possessiveness and stinginess thwart all her bids for freedom. Engstrom's hints at multiple personalities and other mental disorders give this fast-paced book a new approach to the Lizzie Borden enigma. For large fiction collections.- Joan Hinkemeyer, Engle wood P.L., Col.Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. A psychologically astute fictional portrait of the Borden family, this disturbing narrative reveals the repressed demons that may or may not have driven Lizzie to commit her infamous act From Publishers Weekly In Engstrom's fictional treatment of the famous Lizzie Borden murder case of 1892--in which Lizzie allegedly kills both her parents but is acquitted--every door in the Borden house in Fall River, Mass., is metaphorically locked, and each room holds the terrible secrets of its occupant. Emma, Lizzie's older sister, wracked by uncontrollable rages, periodically flees to New Bedford to assuage her surreptitious appetites for sex, drink and violence. Paterfamilias Andrew Borden, tyrannical and penurious in equal measure, loves nothing but money (which he hoards obsessively), concealing his sinful thoughts and acts from his obese second wife, Abby. Lizzie appears to be a serene young woman, but only because, in the author's view, she has repressed another self--angry and long denied, it burns to emerge. At first Engstrom ( Black Ambrosia ) skillfully and subtly builds a psychological plot, moving the reader inexorably toward the anticipated savage denouement. But the very same restraint and innuendo used to good effect in the novel's early portions ill serve the final bloodbath, which approaches anticlimax. Engstrom's supernatural solution to a crime so inimitably real is a cop-out. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.