UNDERLYING NOTES

Author: Eva Pasco ISBN: 0979384478 9/2007 FICTION Publisher: CHARLES RIVERS PRESS

Carla Matteo copes with life by "taking to the bottle"--glass goddesses funneling perfume! During a mid-life renaissance, the juice provides a hook for Carla to find her own niche while the ominous rose note in Paloma Picasso forces her to confront a troubled past. Crumbs of callousness, blame, self-sacrifice, repression, and restlessness are strewn along the unmarked trails of introspection and reinvention weaving through Carla Matteo's journey in the second act of life. Fragrance addiction numbs the pain of her father's tragic death, wards off the sting of a severed adolescent friendship, fortifies her against the stench of employment in her husband's waste management company on land purported to have been swindled by her shady father-in-law, and wafts through fantasies of having a fling with hubby's paesano. Carla's self-deprecating wit and candor navigate the reader past Rhode Island's affluent coastal communities, prominent landmarks, cherished institutions, and olive oil spills of the underworld. Her account is as multilayered as the fragrances she wears to permeate back stories that illuminate the present and surrender underlying secrets one morsel at a time.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Carla Matteo is undergoing a midlife crisis. With no children, a dream career that she'd given up to make her husband happy, and a job she isn't fond of, it's time to make a change. She tells her husband she is bowing out of her secretarial job at the rubbish removal company they built together and tries to find something else to do with her life.

The problem is, Carla isn't sure what to do next. She has a scarred psyche, between her father's strange death and the loss of a dear friend that has left her feeling guilty. Her only hobby is perfumes, and this grows into an obsession as she throws herself into a website bulletin board with similar fanatics and considers her next step.

Life is always changing, and Carla discovers this as an old friend plans his relocation and a new friend moves next door. Carla's not very good at friendship, but she needs to find her footing both in her past and her present. UNDERLYING NOTES is a prose poem as much as a women's fiction novel. Carla tells us her own story and it is suffused with the power of the "juice" - all the perfumes she loves so well. Reading this novel is a heady experience!

Heather Hiestand