USA TODAY 1/3/01:
Debut novels cover rough, weird, touching terrain
By Jackie Pray
In Spilling Clarence by Anne Ursu, a fire at a pharmaceuticals factory releases a mind-altering chemical into the air around Clarence, a small Midwestern town. Residents are awash in memories — a lifetime of memories — more vivid and tangible than their waking lives. It's an intriguing premise.
...[The book] follows five troubled characters: Bennie Singer, a psychology professor who lost his wife in a car accident, and their young daughter, Sophie; Bennie's mother, novelist Madeline Singer; graduate student Todd Lewis and his girlfriend, Susannah Korbet.
Their memories of lost love, a loveless marriage and a mentally ill mother give depth and structure to the story as the five become lost in a tangle of family memories. Eventually, the five find themselves as the chemical dissipates. Reading their stories is better than eavesdropping on a patient's tale to his analyst.
Ursu deftly splices memories, increasingly insistent and troubling memories, into the characters' present-day experiences. Her humorous vignettes of townsfolk immobilized by their past keep the pace lively, while her charming portrayal of precocious Sophie keeps the tone light.
