A moving first novel about the power of friendship to change lives, that will remind readers of Anne Tyler and Alice Hoffman.Renata, a waitress, has left her boyfriend Bryan without telling him he is about to become a father. She drives cross-country to begin a new life in Boston with her baby son, Charlie, hoping to stay free of emotional entanglements and the associations of a painful childhood. Eleanor, a seventy-eight-year-old widow, finds herself gradually stripping away the layers of complication in her life until she is living in virtually a plain white room. June, a young dance student, is dangerously obsessed with thinness to mask her loneliness.The three women, from very different social backgrounds and age, meet by chance and their lives become unexpectedly linked. An emergency involving baby Charlie and the unannounced appearance of Bryan culminates in a dramatic and satisfying conclusion.From Library JournalIn her first novel, Matson has created an interesting triangle of female characters. Renata, Eleanor, and June meet through a series of chance encounters, and their lives become entwined. Renata has driven from Oregon to Boston with her newborn baby, Charlie. She hasn't bothered to tell Bryan, the father, about the baby because she has decided he wouldn't be good father material. Renata moves into the apartment next door to that of Eleanor, a widow and retired judge who has sold the family home at the request of her three children. Eleanor hires June, a young dance student, to clean house and run errands for her. Though June is a troubled recluse with an eating disorder, she and Eleanor soon become good friends. In time, at Eleanor's suggestion, June begins to baby-sit for Renata, and soon all their lives revolve around one another. A mishap involving the baby brings Bryan into the picture and leads to an interesting and satisfying conclusion. This lyrical novel of friendship and love is very readable and enjoyable. Recommended for all public libraries.?Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OhioCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistThe publisher claims that Matson will remind readers of Anne Tyler. Well, some things are too much to hope for, and for Matson, writing like Tyler would be one of them. In a novel driven by huge coincidences and medical mishaps, Matson follows the fortunes of three women: Renata, a waitress who breaks up with her boyfriend rather than tell him she is pregnant and eventually moves east with her infant son; Eleanor, an elegant 78-year-old former judge who is Renata's new neighbor; and June, an anorexic dance student who ends up working for both Eleanor and Renata. When the boyfriend doggedly tracks Renata down, she must share custody of baby Charlie, and she is tempted to run again, but medical emergencies involving her new friends force the couple to work things out. As a soaper, this story isn't bad, so readers who like their dramas on the sudsy side will no doubt enjoy this one. Matson's novel should appeal to the fans of tragedy queen Luanne Rice. Joanne Wilkinson

Suzanne Matson’s engrossing and intimate new novel, Ultraviolet, centers on Kathryn—the daughter of Elsie and mother of Samantha—while illuminating the lives of three generations of women, each more independent than the last. Their stories open in 1930s India, where Elsie lives with her authoritarian missionary husband and their children. Returning to the American Midwest as a teenager, Kathryn feels alienated and restless. When she loses her mother prematurely to a stroke, she escapes to Oregon for a fresh start. Disappointed that her education was cut short by her father, and dreaming of becoming a writer, she supports herself as a waitress in wartime America, dating soldiers, then meeting and marrying Finnish-American Carl. A construction worker sixteen years her senior, he is an unlikely match, though appealing in his care-free ways and stark difference from her Mennonite past. But Kathryn ends up feeling trapped in the marriage, her ambitions thwarted. Samantha, who’s grown up in the atmosphere of her mother’s discontent, follows her own career to teach at a university in faraway Boston, where she maintains a happy family of her own. When Kathryn starts to fail, Samantha moves her mother near her to care for, and then to watch over her deathbed, where “something in the room—the spell, the cord knitting them together—is cut. Or no, that can’t be right, either.” Ultraviolet is a lyrical novel of great emotional depth. Suzanne Matson recognizes both the drama that is within every existence and the strengths and fragilities of our relationships with others. She shines a brilliant light on the complexities of marriage, motherhood, aging, and the end of life.