Recent Reviews
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
In honor of Kazou Ishiguro’s recent Nobel Award for Literature, I reread for the third time his most famous novel, The Remains of The Day. This book never ceases to amaze me, as the novel requires the reader to understand all that is said, but more importantly all that is unsaid. It speaks to England’s role in WWII and the resulting change in the social structure. Ishiguro’s restraint, elegance, and skills as a writer are stunning. The story is told in the first person by James Stevens, the head butler on an English estate named Darlington Hall. He undertakes his job, like his father before him, with solemnity and seriousness as if he is a member of the British military serving his country.
When the novel opens in 1956, eleven years after the end of WWII, Stevens is preparing to travel from Darlington Hall to a small town a few hours away. The journey wakes him to the sad possibility that he might have made a miscalculation in his obedience and incuriosity toward his boss who supported the enemy during the war. “You see, I trusted. I trusted in his lordship's wisdom. All those years I served him; I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can't even say I made my own mistakes.”
And yet Stevens doesn’t linger on his possible miscalculation. He possesses a professional pride such that even when his father lies dying upstairs, Stevens carries out his responsibilities rather than remaining with his dad. And when Lord Darlington demands that Stevens fire two Jewish housekeepers and his colleague Miss Kenton objects, Steven responds, “Surely, I don’t have to remind you that our professional duty is not to our foibles and sentiments, but to the wishes of our employer.”
Stevens intends to visit Miss Kenton, the former head housekeeper at Darlington Hall with whom he worked for many years. While Miss Kenton’s love for Mr. Stevens seems apparent, Mr. Stevens’ is unable to access his feelings about Miss Kenton. Stevens embarks on this pilgrimage, not to untangle his feelings toward her. Rather he psychologically projects his perspective about his life onto her, “All in all, I cannot see why the option of her returning to Darlington Hall and seeing out her working years there should not offer a very genuine consolation to a life that has come to be so dominated by a sense of waste.”
Stevens so embodies his role that he doesn’t know what he thinks or feels, even while he unconsciously fears those feelings. In working to contain his responses, his access to his emotions becomes like a stuck door unable to open. He says, “After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?”
Will Stevens change his life after these small epiphanies of introspection? Not likely. Underneath his professional persona, the reader can see melancholy and pain and a surge of defensiveness. And though Stevens' perspective softens on his journey, I suspect he will fortify his façade for the remainder of his days.
Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett
I can’t say that Imagi e Me Go e by Adam Haslett is an enjoyable read. It is not. And there are certain aspects I wish he wrote differently. However, his novel provides an important contribution to the understanding of mental illness. He doesn’t criticize or complement his characters. He simply gives empathic and eloquent voices to one family’s pain and suffering as they cope with an illness that is not understood or curable.
The novel follows the slow devolution of a family wrestling with the effects of mental illness on two family members. Both parents - John and Margaret - and the three kids - Michael, Celia, and Alec - take turns narrating the story, which adds to the story’s impressiveness. When Margaret and John are young, engaged, and living in England, John lands in a mental hospital. Though the psychiatrist warns Margaret about John’s clinical depression, she does not hesitate to marry him. She loves him. They move to the United States and begin their life together and John’s mental state stabilizes.
Soon after their move, Margaret and John have children, their finances are strained, and sometimes John cannot get up off the couch. Margaret carries the weight of the family responsibilities. The three kids suffer as they witness their parents’ frequent fights and their father’s mental diminishment. When John falls into a deep depression, his family tries to reach him, but their efforts are futile.
When Michael, the eldest son, takes over as narrator, it becomes clear that there is something quite different about him. No question he is intellectually gifted, but there is a neediness, incoherence, and manic element to his narration. Michael’s mother and siblings remain loyal and steadfast. Margaret understands her son and yet she cannot save him from himself. Margaret remembers Michael being different from the day of his birth.
Michael’s family and a few close friends understand his misfiring mind. Their loyalty and devotion to Michael, given his difficult personality, is impressive. His obsession with slavery and oppression exhausts those around him. Michael moves from rabbit hole to rabbit hole, desperate but unsuccessful in establishing relationships. Michael says, “People don’t want to be loved the way I love them. They get suffocated. It isn’t their fault. But it isn’t mine either.”
Michael’s family is willing to do most anything for him. And yet Michael’s mental illness penetrates their emotional and financial lives. Michael’s siblings, Celia and Alec, counsel him, comfort him, and try to provide him the hope he needs to keep living. Even as Celia and Alec live their own lives, Michael’s mental state haunts the entire family as they all struggle and suffer.
Chosen as a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award Long List, Adam Haslett's book successfully tackles this difficult subject with compassion and insight. This is not a book about dysfunctional family dynamics. This is a book about illness: mental illness and its debilitating effects on the afflicted and those who support and love them.
this is my daughter by Roxana Robinson
Though Roxanna Robinson’s book This is My Daughter is not as tightly constructed as her brilliant novel Cost, I believe Robinson is one of the most psychologically astute writers on the subject of family dynamics.
In this novel, Robinson explores the emotional fallout of divorce, especially on children. Emma Goodwin and Peter Chatfield live in the fast moving, well-to-do world of New York City. Their first marriages have ended and they begin to date. Though Emma and Peter seem to possess only superficial understandings of their prior marriages, Robinson provides her readers insight into their early lives and backgrounds.
Their relationship proceeds with ease except for the tension created by the interactions between their daughters. Emma’s daughter Tess is only 3, but Peter’s daughter Amanda is 8 and already troubled. Peter and Emma eventually marry and Amanda’s bossiness escalates to full bullying. Emma observes Amanda belittling Tess and finds it difficult to manage her feelings of resentment even though she knows she should. Emma’s own guilt about divorcing Tess’ father makes her vigilant in meeting Tess’ every need. Meanwhile, Peter is embarrassed and ashamed by his daughter’s behavior and yet requires her to spend summer after summer, holiday after holiday, with Emma and Tess. Peter cannot see his daughter for who she is: an angry, needy, traumatized child of divorce in need of thoughtful and mature parenting.
Roxana Robinson shares the inner thoughts of her characters as they reflect on this family predicament. With great empathy, Robinson conveys the emotional struggle within each of these characters. There is no simple solution for complex family dynamics, especially when the children just want life to return to the familiar pre-divorce routines.
The first two sections of the book could have been better edited, but the last third of the book crescendos to a compelling end, brought on by a crisis. Peter and Emma’s desperation to create a new family unit blinds them to the individual needs of their daughters. Their divorces leave a trail of emotional debris that they never say and never attempted to clean up. Amanda especially needs to be comforted and counseled. She needs love and support from Peter and Emma, not judgment and anger. Peter’s own narcissistic needs make him late to this acknowledgement, but he does arrive and actually begins to see his daughter with greater clarity. The good news is that Peter and Emma both reflect on their prior decisions and offer each other insight about their behaviors. It is not as if this family lives happily ever, but it feels that they will move forward with more understanding about themselves and each other. Really, what more can you ask for?
