Recent Reviews
The Guest Book by Sarah Blake
I love Sarah Blake’s new novel, The Guest Book. It is an engaging and sweeping story about three generations of a New York WASP family struggling with changing social mores and a diminishing fortune. The novel explores how the secrets of one generation can permanently alter the dynamics of the next generation, even if current family members don’t quite understand why. The story’s vivid characters illustrate how WASP culture maintains power by perpetuating racism, sexism and anti-Semitism. Blake’s appreciation of history, both personal and societal, permeates the book. The themes of the novel are provocative, the characters well developed and the dialogue rings true.
In 1935, Ogden and Kitty Milton have everything they want: each other, plenty of money, status in Manhattan society and three beautiful children. Ogden’s traces his lineage back to the Mayflower, and like the Milton men before him, he graduated from Harvard. He runs a successful Wall Street investment firm started by his father. When Kitty and Ogden’s 5-year-old son Neddy falls from a window and dies, Kitty is devastated. Ogden and Kitty don’t speak of Neddy’s death to each other or their surviving children. In true WASP fashion, Ogden’s mother counsels, “Somethings are better off left unsaid.” To help “Kitty snap out of it,” Ogden buys an island off the coast of Maine. (WHAT?!) Each summer, this island becomes the emotional epicenter for the three remaining Milton offspring and eventually their collective five children. While on the island, Kitty reminds her family that “good manners are the foundation of civilization and noise is for the poorly bred.”
In the present, Kitty and Ogden and their progeny are deceased, their fortune spent. The five grandchildren, who are in their 50s, must decide the fate of the family’s island. For Evie, one of the granddaughters, the island cannot be sold as it holds the family’s history and identity. Decade after decade, the family still gathers each summer. Time seems to standstill. “Nothing will ever change. Sunlight. Starlight. Drinks on the dock. A single-sail outing in the bay. It will never change. You will not die. On and On. Like a painting. As long as the island stands, we stand.” And yet just three generations later, Kitty and Ogden’s grandchildren are wrestling with the implication of their grandparents’ depleted fortune.
Willful ignorance is a theme of the novel. At some level, the Milton family never questioned the source of Ogden Milton’s fortune. Years later Evie’s husband discovers Ogden profited from a Nazi affiliated company. More systemic is Kitty and Ogden’s racism, anti-Semitism and myopic perception of the world. Their son Moss knows that the end of WWII is bringing social change and greater inclusion. When he invites his Jewish friend Len Levy and his black friend Reg Pauling to the island, Kitty and Ogden warmly welcome them. Pleasant conversation and genial banter ensue. Though both these men are Harvard graduates, Kitty and Ogden view them as interlopers who can never be a part of the elite establishment. WASPS should be in power. People from other tribes should be guests. The Miltons want to believe the sole reason for their financial success is that Ogden works hard, rather than acknowledging the economic system advances WASPS while excludes others.
Another theme of the novel is how WASP culture values secrecy. The five grandchildren know almost nothing about the climactic night on the island when their Uncle Moss died. Evie says, “No one really talks about Uncle Moss. He was a little tragic, I think. He played the piano.” It is jarring how little his nieces and nephews know of their gregarious, kind and complicated uncle whose life dominated one generation of Miltons.
Kitty and Ogden hoped their island would permanently remain in the Milton family as a counterforce to the simple truth of human existence, “we vanish.” It is unclear what will happen. I wish the novel’s ending offered greater resolution about all the characters. But maybe that is Blake’s point. The older generation of Miltons took many secrets to the grave. It is up to the younger generation to sort through the detritus of their complicated family legacy and understand the implications for their lives.
The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon
This review appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on July 26, 2019
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/incendaries-a-gripping-tale-of-young-lost-souls/
R.O. Kwon’s gripping debut novel ‘The Incendiaries’ explores the psychic appeal of religious zealotry. With acute insight and imaginative structure, the book explores the emotional fragility of two college students as they stumble into adulthood.
Will Kendall and Phoebe Lin are California kids who meet at elite Edwards College in upstate New York. Both are burdened by prior personal crises that had altered the course of their lives. Soon after meeting, they start a relationship. By the story’s end, the police are interrogating Will about Phoebe’s involvement with a Christian cult responsible for bombing an abortion clinic. Five girls perished. Will narrates the story in a retrospective attempt to analyze his relationship with Phoebe and their harrowing first year at college. He writes to Phoebe, whose fate is unknown, “You once told me I hadn’t even tried to understand. So, here I am, trying.”
When Will was in junior high, his mother had descended into depression. He then became a Christian. Not just any Christian, but an evangelical Christian who proselytized for his faith at Fisherman’s Wharf. “I thought I was chosen by Christ. Hand-picked to preach His word.” But Will stopped believing, dropped out of his Bible College and transferred to Edwards. There, his life feels hollow.
Phoebe had been born in Korea, but had moved to Los Angeles with her mother. She became a piano prodigy. Despite rave reviews, she had quit. “I realized I’d rather have no talent than just enough to know how much I lacked.” She and her mother argued about her decision. One night Phoebe was driving and accidentally drifted into an oncoming truck. Her devoted mother died. It was a shattering loss for Phoebe; guilt compounded her anguish. At Edwards, she hides her suffering behind a cheerful façade.
Both Phoebe and Will had zealously pursued passions that had consumed their life energy and given them meaning. But the absence of those passionate pursuits, the loss of parents and the hiding of secrets haunt them. Phoebe moves in with Will and they experience both comfort and conflict. Later Phoebe drifts toward John Leal, a half-Korean Edwards College dropout and leader of a cult. Leal has a murky past. He brainwashes vulnerable students to become “radical for God.” The specific focus of his pathology is stopping abortions.
Phoebe and Will are flailing as they mourn the crumbled remnants of their young lives. They receive some solace from each other, but no adults are available to advise them. A grief counselor or family therapist might have comforted them and helped them find their way forward. Instead, that role is taken up by the cult. Phoebe fills her emptiness by joining Leal and his followers. With him, she receives both the punishment and absolution she seems to be seeking. Will doesn’t join but fills his void by obsessing about Phoebe and popping pills. Having just extricated himself from his evangelical past, he feels betrayed by Phoebe’s involvement with Leal and his radical Christian cult. But, Will reveals that he too is capable of violence.
Kwon’s bold prose, elliptical style and vivid characters make this novel engaging and provocative. Her language is evocative yet sparse. She clearly has empathy and compassion for those who are broken and damaged.
What gives this novel power is Will’s piecing together the factors he believes led to Phoebe’s participation in the abortion bombing. He reflects to the best of his ability. It would have been interesting if Kwon had set this story later. With the benefit of time and deeper psychological reflection, would Will have an even more in-depth view of Phoebe? Would he feel greater remorse for his role in the tragedy? The incendiaries in this novel are the lost and damaged students who take fateful steps down a violent path. We may not forgive them, but thanks to Kwon we better understand them.
The Good Mother by Sue Miller
Thirty years ago my four gal friends and I read Sue Miller’s gripping novel, The Good Mother. Not only did we read The Good Mother, we went to hear fellow Cambridgian Sue Miller speak at our local bookstore. Just out of grad school and starting new jobs, none of us were married and the idea of having kids barely discussed. Yet for a couple of weeks in the late 1980s, this book about a young divorced woman raising her daughter, dominated our conversations. We felt “grown-up” as we parsed Miller’s words and opined on the novel’s dramatic outcome.
Three months ago we decided to reread the novel. We have all been married to our husbands for close to thirty years and have ten kids between us. Rereading the book was like visiting our younger selves. This engaging and well-written novel hadn’t changed, but our views about the book had evolved. We all arrived at a more nuanced understanding and appreciation for the complexity of the story.
The Good Mother is about a young thirty-something woman named Anna Dunlap. She and her ex-husband, Brian, marry young and divorce young. Anna seems passive and unemotional about both her marriage and divorce. In an amicable process, Anna is awarded custody of their three-year old daughter Molly. Brian moves to Washington D.C. and marries a woman named Brenda.
Soon Anna falls for an aspiring artist named Leo Cutter whom she meets at a Porter Square laundry mat. Leo’s energy and intellect captivate Anna and they begin an intense relationship. With Leo, Anna discovers parts of herself that were previously unknown to her. Her sexual relationship with Leo is physically and emotionally fulfilling.
The book follows Anna‘s life as she attempts to balance her desire for her boyfriend Leo, her devotion to her daughter Molly and her work as a piano teacher and lab assistant. Anna, Leo and Molly settle into a sweet routine together in Cambridge. Anna says toward the end of the book, “We were all – Molly too-we were all happy. It was part of the new world he, my lover, opened up to me, where I was beautiful, sex together was beautiful, and Molly was part of our love, our life.”
When Molly tells her father Brian of an unusual encounter with Leo, chaos ensues. Before long, Anna needs to hire a lawyer as Brian will not listen or understand. Soon, a heartbreaking court battle for custody of Molly begins. The court scenes convey the harsh scrutiny and double standard women face in front of male judges
Miller’s book reveals the multi-faceted layers of feelings that exist in relationships and the extra burden placed on women who seek to fully embrace their dual roles as wives and mothers - lovers and caretakers.
Miller’s psychological insight is impressive. She details the most formative emotional events of Anna’s first twenty years as the only child of two distant parents. We comprehend how Anna arrives at this point in her life and how she responds to this tumultuous turn of events. Miller’s beautiful writing captures the intricacy and complexity of Anna’s encounters with Brain, Leo and Molly.
Now that I am in my mid-50s with three grown kids, I can better comprehend the complicated family dynamics. In addition, my strong opinion about Molly’s fate has softened.
Even still, I believe Anna Dunlap was a good mother.
