Redemption by Kay Langdale

Transita. Oxford
November 2006

Kay Langdale’s debut novel is, in the simplest of terms, an account of love and marriage. Avoiding entirely the clichés of romance or “chick-lit” genres, however, Langdale’s approach in crafting Redemption is refreshingly, compellingly alternative. Six women—wives, daughters, a grandmother still a virgin, an unwed mother of sixteen, an aging mistress—inextricably but unknowingly bound to one another, are compelled by coinciding circumstances to determine and face the truths of their married lives. Beginning with Sarah, a middle‘aged working mother whose happy but familiar life with husband Michael is threatened by a fantasy desire which, when combined with opportunity, tempts her to consider an affair, Langdale subsequently winds her narrative between and within the lives of Kate, Isobel, Martha, Sheila, and Judith. With each new perspective comes a fuller understanding of characters at once varied and connected, of experience unusual yet utterly believable, and an ultimate collected realization of what it means for each woman to be, and to have, a marriage partner.

Langdale’s work derives its greatest strength from the confluence of an elegant, adept use of language and a singularly insightful evocation of the mature female psyche. Spread as it is between six women, who stand united as much by their flawed and honest humanity as by the workings of Langdale’s plot, that insight lends the novel a resonant validity—one which, I imagine, would suffer had Langdale chosen a narrower scope, and the delineation of a single heroine. In light of Redemption’s ultimate argument for marriage made in the face of social challenges and modern skepticism, the novel’s structural effectiveness takes on thematic significance as well. For the work*’ breadth of understanding and accrued wisdom, resulting from an intent focus upon female honesty, proves the strength of a sustained bond to redeem misuse or abuse of marriage vows, and even transform that bond to the greater empowerment of each woman’s individuality.