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"Insightful character study"

In 1964 Wynnemoor, Pennsylvania, nine-year-old Jane MacLeod escapes from her unhappily married parents by writing about happy families coming together. However, on the night the Beatles appear on TV, her mother unable to stand the way her surgeon husband constantly deserts her to care for his patients, takes the children and leaves. Jane blames herself because she informed her father the phone was off the hook, something her mother did to keep the hospital from calling.

Now in her mid twenties, Jane is visiting London, heeding the advice of her grandmother to always THINK OF ENGLAND when depressed. She makes friends there, but feels guilt from what she caused to her family. Jane remains disconnected and still yearning for a happy family.

Thirty-six, Jane is a single mother of nine-year old Emily. At her mother's sixty-fifth birthday bash, Jane and her mother discuss that fateful day for the first time since it happened. Jane begins to finally come to grips with the underlying cause of why she lives a life filled with guilt. Perhaps now she can heal and shower the love of a happy family on her child?

THINK OF ENGLAND is at its best when Jane takes center stage, as she is a wonderfully complex character. When the story line places her in a back seat (during the middle years), the tale loses focus spinning in a different direction. However, the plot rights itself for the final segment. Alice Elliot Dart's tale is a well written character study that is intended for those who want to know the answer to is that all there is?

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted April 12, 2002

Jane had a pen and a notebook with her, just in case; she liked to write things down. She was the kind of girl who felt New Year's should be in the fall, at the beginning of school, the kind of girl who begged for chores and saved quarters in a jar to buy a pony. At nine Jane began to want a room of her own. She was writing a book.

It has been said that children are great observers but poor interpreters. Jane, who dreams of being part of a happy family, thinks she's responsible for her parents' misery. She wishes everyone would follow her grandmother's advice in times of crisis -- think of England -- a phrase that makes her feel safe.

When the MacLeods gather for the Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, Jane sees in the band the same profound pining she feels in herself. But later that night a tragedy dashes her hope for the future and burdens her with guilt for decades to come. Years later, Jane travels to London, where she meets a man who reignites her desire for a happy life, but again she is disillusioned. It isn't until she is a single mother with a daughter of her own that, at another family gathering, Jane comes to terms with the mystery of her past.

Alice Elliott Dark has been celebrated for her short fiction, collected in Naked to the Waist and In the Gloaming. Each of these stories, said Joyce Carol Oates, "exudes the gravitas of a radically distilled novel." With Think of England, Dark rises to Oates's prescient praise, revealing herself to be a master of the longer form.