Trespass | Grace Dane Mazur | Traipsing into TRESPASS

Trespass | Grace Dane Mazur | A cautious read, but worth it

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Trespass

	Trespass Grace Dane Mazur Graywolf Press, 2002 - 222 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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"She was not afraid of this man, but it flustered her that his small conversational rudeness--the abruptness of his refusal to explain about bathtubs--seemed to have given him the upper hand. No matter, he was starkers and an intruder and folded into her own laundry tub, and even though she was naked and fifty years old and alone in the house, she was strong and she knew how to kick, and besides, there was a long-handled shovel leaning on the wall right behind her."

Maggie Gifford is shocked to see a strange man bathing in her laundry tub, but even more shocked by her response: an offer to scrub his back. Unleashing an erotic madness reminiscent of A Midsummer Night's Dream, this peculiar stranger runs amok during the Gifford family annual summer reunion, disrupting the otherwise peaceful farmland of the southeastern Massachusetts shore.

But the Gifford family is not without its own peculiarities. Maggie is secretly loved and desired by her own cousin Jake, a remittance man and mail-order minister. Jake lives on the border of Maggie's life, on the farm adjacent to Maggie's house. His beautiful gardens are a daily tribute to Maggie, and each year he constructs a hidden room in the forest made of flowers, plants, and trees, for her birthday. But someone has poisoned Jake's gardens and his relationship with Maggie--destroying the delicate arrangement he spent years trying to create. Is it Maggie's daughter who lures men with her angst-ridden poetry; Jake's often estranged girlfriend, an installation artist who runs a Volvo dealership; or the disarming shadow of the man who is trespassing in their woods and hearts?

In this luminous first novel, Mazur shows with humor and grace that despite the well-tended garden of life, desire and nature have the power to break loose, which can lead to an explosion of random beauty.

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Traipsing into TRESPASS

Last year I read mathematician Barry Mazur's nonfiction book, "Imagining Numbers," and noted he was married to a novelist, whom I'd never heard of. Curious to find out what sort of novelist would be married to one of the world's foremost mathematicians, I ordered her novel.

I enjoyed it tremendously. While there are many strengths, I particularly enjoyed the character Jake, a mail order minister, gardener and sometime pot grower.He's one of the best characters I've read in a long time, and the scene where he christens twins one of the funniest.

My only regret is that Ms. Mazur didn't write a mathematician character.

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A cautious read, but worth it

I actually had to read this book for a class but was mildly surprised with what Mazur has to offer. This book begins just as the back cover description goes, with a woman finding a strange man bathing in her washtub. An odd beginning for an outstandingly odd story. While it seems to border at times with the fringes of a bad soap opera, this story manages to capture the reality of a strikingly different life situation. It gives further focus to the human condition of finding boundaries and giving definition to overlapping human relationships.

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