Began promisingly enough, with a captivating storyline and likeable characters. All too sudden, however, the disaffected upper middle class characters became trite and cumbersome. The first half--the quasi-novel--was interesting but started to come apart at the seams. The second half was full of great stories but lacked a central theme, clarity or cohesion.
"Courts of Love" begins with a novella starring Nora Jean Whittington, and follows her in her adventures. Among these adventures are a surprise encounter between her husband and the father of one of her twin girls, the trials and tribulations of enrolling in college in mid-life, being interrogated after a writer acquaintance dies, and saving her husband and twins from a terrible storm. These tales are entertaining and a bit enchanting, with many of them intertwining and doubling back on one another. Then, the story turns over to the exploits of family friend Nieman with a jarring jump back in time. Though a bit confusing, the story is able to pick itself, dust itself off, and wrap up with more cosmic chance happenings.
Unfortunately, unless the reader has read and is familiar with many of Gilchrist's works, the second half of the book (entitled Past) seems disjointed and out of sync with the budding novel of the first half. Though several of the stories are engaging and well written--especially "The Dog Who Delivered Papers to the Stars"--to enjoy them fully required a familiarity I did not have.
In short, Gilchrist proved herself a solid story-teller, as long as the reader can get past the bourgeousie characters' consistent knack for quoting classics works, then pausing and naming the author. ( )