Word: orchardes
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...Orchard Park...
...MARBLE ORCHARD (237 pp.) - Margaret Boylen - Random House...
...tyranny turns heavy with foreboding. Lovey, The Beautiful Blind Girl, can see again-but she has cunningly preserved her three-week secret. For sight regained means Paradise Lost: an end to the antic freedom accorded Lovey by the town, and eviction from the cemetery's marble orchard which, blind, she has been allowed to make her private playground. Back to sight means back to schools and parties, and the shrill anonymity of being just another girl growing up in New Hoosic...
...regains the capacity for grief. Outraged by her parents' glee during the sterile funeral service, Lovey tauntingly tells them she can see again ("Father, your hair is horrible"). Lovey's parents hardly listen to the news. Her big moment ruined, Lovey runs tearfully back to her marble orchard...
...Marble Orchard is a deliberately zany book, and Novelist Boylen's bizarre theme is as difficult to sustain as Lovey's pretense of blindness; at times, the writing is as stiffly convoluted as a plastic funeral wreath. It is, nevertheless, a sprightly blend of social satire and comedy -and an engaging record of a Tomboy Sawyer's struggle to find her bearings in the nincompoop latitudes...