Recent Reviews
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan’s impressive novel astutely explores complicated psychological dynamics. The year is 1962. Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting are staying at an inn perched on a bluff overlooking Chesil Beach and the English Channel. Here is the first sentence, "They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.”
Married that morning, this novel describes their disastrous attempt to consummate their marriage. That Edward and Florence share a deep love for one another is never in doubt. Their connection is honest, playful, and respectful. Yet, they both have psychological dimensions of themselves they have not explored. After a lovely wedding and reception, their fears, expectations, and innocence infiltrate the hotel room and their easy rapport dissolves. McEwan’s precise prose describes the wrenching events and powerful emotions that end the marriage before it begins. His carefully crafted sentences operate on multiple levels. He describes the dominant factors that shaped Edward and Florence’s childhoods and offers insight into their responses to their sexual encounter. He alludes to the possibility that Florence’s father sexually abused Florence. But that possibility has not emerged from Florence’s unconscious. Edward, too, has issues. McEwan writes, ”The language and practice of therapy, the currency of feelings diligently shared, mutually analyzed, and were not yet in general circulation.” Even still, I want to climb into the book and tell Florence and Edward: Take a deep breath. You love each other. You can work this out.
Instead, Florence and Edward withdrawal from each other and develop their separate narratives about what went wrong. Given the high emotion of this intimate encounter, they feel embarrassed, ashamed, and angry. Their vulnerability and insecurities prohibit them from authentically sharing their feelings. They lash out, retreat from one another, and return to their prior lives. McEwan describes the multiple layers of miscomprehension: “And what stood in their way? Their personalities and pasts, their ignorance and fear, timidity, squeamishness, lack of entitlement or experiences or easy manners, then the tail end of a religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself. Nothing much at all."
McEwan shows us their futures without one another. He reminds his readers that one event or even one evening can change the trajectory of a life. At the end of the book, Edward is in his 60’s and is ruminating about his wedding night 40 years ago: “All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience - if only he had had them both at once - would have surely seen them both through. This is how the entire course of a life can be changed-by doing nothing.” With psychological insight, McEwan provides a vivid portrait of a couple that loves each other - but tragically, in this story, love is not enough.
the Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s The Language of Flowers is a beautiful book about the redemptive power of love, wisdom, grace and healing. By illuminating the Victorian era practice of communicating feelings through flower selection, Diffenbaugh softens the otherwise painful story of a young women trapped in the foster care system. We first meet 18 year-old Victoria Jones on her “emancipation day.” Victoria's social worker is driving her to a transition home in the Sunset District of San Francisco. Victoria feels unwanted, unloved, and unworthy. Abandoned at three weeks, Victoria has lived in dozens of foster homes. Though she is bright, her anti-social behavior and attachment disorder cause her to hide within herself. Victoria has pushed away anyone that begins to care about her. The pain of familiar isolation is better than the pain of rejection and abandonment. Miraculously, she endures the foster care system for 18 years. After running away from her “transition” home, she is homeless and living in a public park. She eventually works for a florist named Renata and rents a tiny room from Renata’s sister. After she meets Grant at the flower market, he hands her a clipping of mistletoe, which Victoria knows to symbolize - I surmount all obstacles. Victoria then gives Grant snapdragon which symbolizes-presumption. Victoria’s feels fear and something new: a glimmer of hope as she realizes they both know the language of flowers.
The story alternates between Victoria’s post-emancipation life and her recollection of the most formative year of her life when, at age 10, Victoria is placed in a foster home north of San Francisco. Her new foster mother, Elizabeth, is single and lives in a house on a vineyard. After experiencing abuse and neglect, Victoria seems incapable of receiving love. Yet, the lush landscape of grapes, flowers, and endless sky offer possibility. Her new foster mother sets clear boundaries for Victoria. She cooks her delicious meals, pays attention to her, and treats her with compassion and respect. Victoria’s hardened heart begins to yield. She is finally being treated with respect, not like an unworthy foster kid.
Initially, it is difficult for Elizabeth and Victoria. Yet, Elizabeth knows the shame of rejection and abandonment. She too was neglected and received little love from her distant father and mentally ill mother. She perseveres due to the love of her older sister, Catherine, who now lives next door. This experience provides Elizabeth with empathy and understanding. She tells Victoria, “Nothing you could do would make me send you away. Nothing. So you can go on testing me, hurling my mother's silver around the kitchen, if that is what you have to do - but know that my response will always be the same: I will love you and I will keep you.”
Elizabeth teaches Victoria the turn-of-the-century practice of conveying emotion through flowers. This cryptic communication resonates with Victoria and she begins to share her emotions through flowers. Victoria asks Elizabeth the name of the flower for hate. Elizabeth retorts, “The flower you are looking for is clearly the common thistle, which symbolizes "misanthropy." Misanthropy means hatred or mistrust of humankind. Victoria responds, “No one had ever described my feelings in a single word.” Victoria quickly absorbs this new language and uses it to communicate her feelings to Elizabeth. Victoria settles into Elizabeth’s world and experiences the feeling of being loved. “I didn't want to go back. I liked Elizabeth I liked her flowers, her grapes, and her concentrated attention. Finally, I realized, I had found a place I wanted to stay.”
Yet trouble is brewing. The sisters have not spoken in 15 years. The silence emanating from Catherine’s house next door has wrapped itself like a vine around Elizabeth’s heart. She begs her sister to talk with her, but is met with silence. Her grief and despair take their toll on Elizabeth's relationship with Victoria. When the day comes for Elizabeth to adopt Victoria, Elizabeth panics. She does not get out of bed. She fears she cannot provide Victoria with the love and nurturing she never received. Emotional chaos ensues and Victoria does something shocking. The foster care system cannot make sense of what transpired. There is miscommunication and misunderstanding and the fragile possibility of a loving home evaporates. Victoria is sent back into the foster care system for eight more years. Her grief is overwhelming as Victoria knows Elizabeth loves her and yet, in her guilt and confusion, Victoria believes she deserves her fate.
I don’t want to spoil the many subplots. But during the year that Victoria lives with Elizabeth, the seeds of love and acceptance were planted in Victoria. They are not revealed for 10 more years and Victoria’s painful path is hard to observe. Yet, Victoria does change and learns to integrate a bit of the love and trust she learned from Elizabeth into her present life. When Victoria sees Elizabeth again after 10 years, she bring Elizabeth a huge bouquet of flowers. The flowers in the bouquet are: Flax – I feel your kindness; forget me not – forget me not; hazel - reconciliation; white rose - grace; pink rose - a heart acquainted with love; helenium - tears; periwinkle - tender recollections; primrose - childhood; and bellflower - gratitude. Victoria has grown and changed. She not only understands the language of flowers; she can now experience the feelings they symbolize.
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
I recently reread this wonderful novel by Kim Edwards published in 2005. The plot is straightforward, but the emotional dynamics are complex. It is 1964 in Louisville, Kentucky and Dr. David Henry and his wife Norah are expecting a baby. In the midst of a fierce storm, David and his nurse, Caroline Gill, deliver not one, but two babies. The first is a healthy boy Norah names Paul. Then, unexpectedly, another baby emerges. When David Henry realizes his daughter has Down’s Syndrome, he directs Caroline to take the girl to a home for disabled children. When Caroline protests, David says, “Don’t you see? This poor child will most likely have a serious heart defect. A fatal one. I’m trying to spare us all a terrible grief.” When Norah wakes, Caroline is driving to the Home for Feeble Minded Children. David tells Norah, “Oh my love. I am so sorry. Our little daughter died as she was born.”
This novel explores the consequences of making a decision, maybe even a well intentioned one, without understanding the ramifications of one’s motivations and feelings. David is intellectually gifted and compassionate toward others. Yet his emotional development has been stunted. He makes an impulsive decision and the rest of his life is tangled up in the implications of his choice. Every day he hopes to confess to Norah, but the months and then the years pass by. David's guilt and sorrow consume him. Norah's depression over the death of her daughter engulfs her. Paul grows angrier and angrier as his parents argue and then drift apart in silence. David says about his relationship with Paul, “The lie had grown up between them like a rock, forcing them to grow oddly too, like tress twisting around a boulder.” We also learn that Caroline did not leave the baby girl at the impersonal and uncaring institution. She instead left Louisville and raised Phoebe as her own daughter. She loves Phoebe and creates a happy and loving home for her. She informs David of her decision and sporadically sends letters telling him about their lives. He doesn't inquire how Phoebe is doing, but he does send money.
Sixteen years later, Caroline seeks out David to ask him about his most recent letter in which David asks Caroline if he can meet Phoebe. After their intense conversation, David takes a bus to the poor, small one room house where he was raised. Exhausted and distraught, he falls asleep and wakes up lying on a bed (or is it a couch?). A young pregnant girl named Rosemary is cooking at the stove. The painful memories of his youth overwhelm him and he confesses his secret to her. " I gave her away. She has Down's syndrome, which means she's retarded. I gave her away. I never told anyone. "She silently listens and David's emotional healing begins. We learn more about his beloved younger sister, June, who died of a heart defect at the age of twelve. The narrator says, “When June died he had no way to give voice to what had been lost, no real way to move on. It was unseemly, even, to speak of the dead in those days, so they had not.” He knew of his grief, but now decades later he experiences that grief within the crumbling walls of this structure. He remembers his sister gasping for breath as his parents and he watched helplessly. “This was the grief he had carried with him, heavy as a stone in his heart. This was the grief he had tried to spare Norah and Paul, only to create so much more.”
Kim Edwards packs plenty of other emotional episodes into this novel as each character changes in response to the presence of this unspoken secret. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a beautiful read and the resolution is satisfying for all those affected by David’s decision. In the end, it is not Phoebe who dies of a broken heart.
Some people can repress painful memories from their pasts. But most people’s repression capabilities are finite. At some point, a catalytic episode requires engagement with one’s demons. Edward’s novel gives readers an example of what can happen if painful feelings are repressed for too long.
