This second novel from Carol Anshaw, author of Aquamarine, describes a desperate search for a lover who has simply disappeared one morning without a trace, and a gnawing fear that perhaps the lover was not really known at all. Chris is a therapist in a stable and strong lesbian relationship with Taylor, a travel photographer and a free spirit who has occasionally been unfaithful. When Chris awakens to find Taylor gone she cannot accept either suicide or abandonment as explanations. She hires a cop, a private investigator, and a psychic and goes looking for Taylor, a journey in time and place, across the world, and back through memory. The pursuit becomes an investigation of what we can know about another.


From Library Journal
Christine Snow is a successful therapist with a full professional schedule, a new house, a dog, and a live-in companion she adores. These seemingly mundane details cement together a life lived on the margins: Chris is lesbian in a mostly straight world, responsible but burdened with fallout from a wildly dysfunctional family, settled but with a recent history of promiscuity and excess. When Taylor, the love of her life, disappears suddenly, leaving no clues except photos of an exotic stranger, Chris's hard-won middle way implodes. Her frantic search for Taylor takes her from Chicago's lesbian social scene to Morocco and on a psychological odyssey as necessary as it is painful. With its heady mix of suspense and humor, edgy urban ambience, and down-to-earth, touching characters, this second novel from the author of the award-winning Aquamarine (LJ 3/15/96) will not disappoint. Recommended.?Starr E. Smith, Marymount Univ. Lib., Arlington, Va.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Peter Cameron
... the dramatic inevitability feels right because Ms. Anshaw explores her characters rather than manipulates them, and the result has more resonant truth than cheap suspense.


From Booklist
The title of Carol Anshaw's second novel refers to an adage, "Seven moves equal one fire," which addresses the ways we lose things--gradually, by careless attrition, or through a single sudden catastrophe. The fire that guts psychiatrist Chris Snow's life is the disappearance of her longtime lover, Taylor, after a seemingly trivial argument. A week passes, then another, until it no longer seems likely that Taylor will walk through the door as if nothing has happened. Chris reminds herself to change her clothes, feed the dog, see her patients, but she has to admit she's losing her grip on the routine when her psychiatric partner drops by to tell her to take a shower. A clue found in Taylor's darkroom leads Chris to Morocco, where the missing woman frequently was assigned photo shoots. Once there, Chris finds that their life together was permeated with a haze of half-truths and omissions--a discovery that calls into question both her personal motives and her professional acumen. How can she advise others when her own life has gone so wrong? Anshaw's present-tense narrative is witty and intimate, and her story is peopled with remarkably sympathetic, three-dimensional characters. A brilliant follow-up to the award-winning Aquamarine (1992). June Vigor


From Kirkus Reviews
A pleasantly ambiguous psychological-suspense novel from Anshaw (the award-winning Aquamarine, 1991), who shows us once again that a good story can be told as much by what it holds back as by what it offers. When Christine Snow's girlfriend Taylor disappears without a trace one morning, Christine is at first reluctant to panic. This has more to do with Christine than with Taylor: Like all good psychotherapists, Christine has been trained to let problems reveal themselves slowly and with a minimum of overt speculation, and this emotional reticence will itself provide the best clue to Taylor's fate. ``Making love with women,'' Christine says, ``is the easiest thing for me to do with them. Everything else leaps so quickly into difficult and complicated.'' This attitude has assured her many friends but few mates over the years, and for a long time she pretends not to mind Taylor's absence. Eventually, though, she realizes that her independence is less complete than she imagines and, once she sees this, she takes on the task of finding Taylor. This finally carries Christine as far as Morocco, where Taylor had lived for some time under the influence of a strange religious visionary and the motley coterie that encircled her. Taylor's story, like all good mysteries, becomes murkier and more troubling as it proceeds, and Christine eventually discovers that she is looking for quite a different woman than the one she thought she knew--which, in turn, suggests that a similar reorientation of Christine's own personality may be in store. By the time we arrive at the last chapter, we find that the loose ends and ambiguities are beside the point, and it isn't troubling to find them unresolved. The real skill of Anshaw's narrative is that it makes the reader understand and appreciate Christine's changing perceptions at every stage of the action. Clever, well-crafted, and deft: Anshaw draws her characters with an unsparing hand that is guided by a remarkably sympathetic eye. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"Beatifully Nuanced"


Review
"Beatifully Nuanced"


Book Description
Christine Snow, a successful Chicago therapist, sets out to find her vanished lover, the sultry and elusive travel photographer Taylor Hayes. Forging a trail that leads into the heart of Morocco, Seven Moves tracks Christine's gradual recognition that no one can ever really know another's soul. Bearing Anshaw's trademark style -funny, hip, and laser-sharp -this is "a tightly told tale that resists the bookmark as well as any thriller" (Chicago Sun-Times). A Reader's Guide is now available.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Christine Snow, a Chicago therapist, has at last returned from the margins of her past - a cardsharp father, too many wrong lovers - into comfortable urban domesticity with Taylor Hayes, a travel photographer. The two women share a house, a dog, a life. And then one morning after a minor argument, Taylor disappears. At first angry, Chris becomes alarmed. Has Taylor abandoned her, or has she met with some terrible fate? Chris's best friend, Daniel, forever on his own hapless search for love, consoles her but can't comfort her. Her patients continue to demand her attention while Chris becomes too distraught even to take care of herself. Then, coming through Taylor's darkroom, Chris discovers a clue to Taylor's whereabouts that is as unsettling as her lover's disappearance. Following a trail that leads to Morocco and back home again, Seven Moves tracks Christine's gradual recognition that no one can ever really know another's soul.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The gift for narrative and character development that Anshaw revealed in her first novel, Aquamarine, are brought to generous fulfillment in this beautifully nuanced novel that traces a woman's troubled search for identity. When lesbian Chicago psychologist Chris Snow realizes that her lover, Taylor Heyes, has left her, it is not only her emotional equilibrium that is threatened. As she eventually discovers, charismatic photographer Taylor had many secrets and a dark side of which others, but not Chris, were aware. Chris fears that since she failed to understand the crucial relationship of her life, perhaps her work as a therapist also has no validity. Anshaw's account of Chris's confusion and grief and her shaky journey to self-understanding is completely absorbing. A fascinating clue to Chris's vulnerability and lack of self-esteem is revealed in flashbacks to her youth, when she was sidekick and accomplice to her father, a charming con man and card-sharp. Other characters are drawn with panache, including the elusive Taylor, the couple's various lesbian friends, Chris's Hispanic clients and her straight partner, even a chronically insecure dog. Anshaw's prose is supple and vigorous, providing quirky and surprising insights and witty dialogue. She surveys the terrain of female sexuality with frankness and compassion. While this novel will surely appeal to a lesbian audience, its truths about human nature should appeal to all thoughtful readers. (Oct.)

"Beatifully Nuanced"

Library Journal

Christine Snow is a successful therapist with a full professional schedule, a new house, a dog, and a live-in companion she adores. These seemingly mundane details cement together a life lived on the margins: Chris is lesbian in a mostly straight world, responsible but burdened with fallout from a wildly dysfunctional family, settled but with a recent history of promiscuity and excess. When Taylor, the love of her life, disappears suddenly, leaving no clues except photos of an exotic stranger, Chris's hard-won middle way implodes. Her frantic search for Taylor takes her from Chicago's lesbian social scene to Morocco and on a psychological odyssey as necessary as it is painful. With its heady mix of suspense and humor, edgy urban ambience, and down-to-earth, touching characters, this second novel from the author of the award-winning Aquamarine (LJ 3/15/96) will not disappoint. Recommended.Starr E. Smith, Marymount Univ. Lib., Arlington, Va.

Kirkus Reviews

A pleasantly ambiguous psychological-suspense novel from Anshaw (the award-winning Aquamarine, 1991), who shows us once again that a good story can be told as much by what it holds back as by what it offers.

When Christine Snow's girlfriend Taylor disappears without a trace one morning, Christine is at first reluctant to panic. This has more to do with Christine than with Taylor: Like all good psychotherapists, Christine has been trained to let problems reveal themselves slowly and with a minimum of overt speculation, and this emotional reticence will itself provide the best clue to Taylor's fate. "Making love with women," Christine says, "is the easiest thing for me to do with them. Everything else leaps so quickly into difficult and complicated." This attitude has assured her many friends but few mates over the years, and for a long time she pretends not to mind Taylor's absence. Eventually, though, she realizes that her independence is less complete than she imagines and, once she sees this, she takes on the task of finding Taylor. This finally carries Christine as far as Morocco, where Taylor had lived for some time under the influence of a strange religious visionary and the motley coterie that encircled her. Taylor's story, like all good mysteries, becomes murkier and more troubling as it proceeds, and Christine eventually discovers that she is looking for quite a different woman than the one she thought she knew—which, in turn, suggests that a similar reorientation of Christine's own personality may be in store. By the time we arrive at the last chapter, we find that the loose ends and ambiguities are beside the point, and it isn't troubling to find them unresolved. The real skill of Anshaw's narrative is that it makes the reader understand and appreciate Christine's changing perceptions at every stage of the action.

Clever, well-crafted, and deft: Anshaw draws her characters with an unsparing hand that is guided by a remarkably sympathetic eye.