A Quiet Drink: Deborah Moggach

Deborah Moggach’s novel, A Quiet Drink, examines marriage–its tolls, its expectations and its complications through 3 couples. Claudia, determined not to follow in her mother’s footsteps, decided as a child to have a career. As an adult, she is self-contained and self-sufficient. Then she meets Adrian, a man who is attracted to her for her independence, “her inability to serve and dote” and they marry. But then 7 years later, Claire’s independence becomes the very issue that Adrian complains about when he ends their marriage. He complains that she “make[s] him feel so redundant,” and that he feels like her “damned lodger,” so he leaves Claire for Beth, a “dowdy” woman who apparently possesses, according to Adrian, all the attributes Claire lacks–including the fact that she lives to cook Adrian’s meals.

When the book opens, Claire is trying to come to terms with Adrian’s departure. Also trying to come to terms with life is salesman Steve, who is newly married to June. Things have changed since they got married. “Before the bouquet had withered in its silver foil June had reverted to what he realized was her normal routine” and a certain primness and sexual freeze rules. A year into the marriage, June announces that she has left her job in a department store so she can “care” for him. Steve isn’t thrilled and “felt the faint stirrings of unease,” but then again how can he argue against June’s desire to take care of him. Isn’t he a lucky man?

The third marriage under scrutiny (but to a much lesser degree) is between Wil and Verity. Verity is Claire’s best friend, and while Claire has remained childless and devoted to her career, Verity moved to the wilds of the countryside where her energies are poured into babies, toddlers and home grown vegetables. Claire, at loose ends after Adrian’s departure, visits Verity and discovers that her friend’s life isn’t as idyllic as she imagined.

As the book continues, Claire decides to take in a lodger, a quiet, repressed librarian named Alistair. In the meantime, Steve, who feels “swaddled” by June’s domesticity, begins to question his moral place in the universe and his employment with a cosmetic company.

Marriage is under the microscope here–how we are attracted to people for the very things that later are the traits that drive us apart. How do two individuals adjust to the commitment of a life together? Do both people in a marriage blend smoothly into one being (fat chance)? And if not, how does each partner comfortably negotiate the space of the individual vs the couple? Is one personality swamped by the desires and goals of another? (Back to that “diners and the dinners” quote from Amy Witting) What happens when one partner decides that he/she is no longer a good fit in a marriage? Personal growth is after all desired in one’s life, but how does one manage that within the construction of marriage? Can two people grow and develop in tandem?

There are moments in the novel when several of the characters decide to go for a ‘quiet drink.’ These events are turning points in their lives as a ‘quiet drink’ evolves into transformative moments and/or revelations. For this reader, the novel was not entirely satisfactory. The whole Alistair thread seemed a bit contrived, and the novel is marred by too many coincidences–London is after all a big place. The Steve/ June resolution seems… well… to merely delay the day of reckoning. But in spite of its flaws, I found myself liking the book and chewed over the marriages under scrutiny here for some days.

The Hunter: Tana French

Set in the remote Irish village of Ardnakelty, Tana French’s novel, The Hunter, returns to the characters in The Searchers. Cal Hooper, an ex-cop on early retirement from Chicago PD, spends his time refinishing and selling furniture. While he has an adult daughter still in America, Cal’s two significant relationships in his new home are with Lena, an attractive widow and teenager Trey Reddy. In this static community where newcomers are viewed with amusement, derision and scorn, Lena and Trey may be locals but they are outsiders for different reasons, and perhaps that explains why they form a close friendship.

Years ago, Trey’s ne’er-do-well father, Johnny left his wife and children. They struggled with poverty alone, but then a further blow arrived when Trey’s older brother, Brendan, disappeared two years earlier. There are various rumours about Trey’s brother, but the truth, known by Lena, Cal, and Trey, is that Brendan is dead. For the past few years, Lena and Cal have assumed almost parental roles for Trey; they love and care for the girl, feed her and offer her shelter. But things begin to go terribly wrong when Johnny returns.

Johnny, always a charmer, appears to be down on his luck and that’s certainly a good enough explanation for his return. Trey’s mother is less-than-thrilled to see Johnny return, and while she lacks the energy or spare emotion to eject him, she acts as though he’s foul weather one must endure until he leaves. It’s clear to Cal that Johnny has returned for a reason, and that reason soon seems to emerge.

Johnny tells all the local men that he ran into a man named Rushborough in England who had roots back in Ardnkelty. According to Johnny, Rushborough is a rich rube laced with nostalgia for his Irish roots, and hand-in-hand with that nostalgia is the legend, passed to Rushborough by his Granny, that there’s gold in the region.

Johnny aware that the region is poor with no hope of an economic upswing, voices his con to the local landowners to fleece this man with stories of gold in the local mountains. Soon the locals are regaling Rushborough, a “plastic Paddy,” with the sort of nonsense they roll out for the tourists. Johnny’s plan is that each man should put 300 into the pot to buy gold, and then plant it in the rivers as part of an elaborate con. Then, according to Johnny, Rushborough will buy up the land. One man, Mart has a cynical view of Johnny’s plan:

“This is the best entertainment that’s come to town in years. It’d almost be worth throwing in the few bob, just to have a front row seat.”

“Get Netflix,” Cal says. “Cheaper.”

While Rushborough appears to swallow the tales of leprechauns, there are times when his mask slips, and Cal thinks Rushborough “has a face that would make any sensible man want to walk away.” The situation becomes increasingly complicated as the locals, sucked deeper and deeper into Johnny’s plan, dream of all the wealth that awaits them. Mart takes a philosophical view of Johnny’s promises. He says that the local men are depressed and have little to distract them from their abysmal prospects. But now they have a “bad case of allurement.”

And then along comes the bold Johnny, prancing in here with his stories about film stars and millionaires and gold.

Cal gets involved mainly to keep an eye on Trey and as the story develops, Cal realises that he’s badly underestimated Trey and her desire for revenge.

Review copy

Soon: Charlotte Grimshaw

“People say they want someone who understands them. But I think, be careful with that. You might be better off with someone who doesn’t.”

Charlotte Grimshaw’s novel Soon, picks up the lives of the characters in The Night Book. In The Night Book, successful Auckland ob/gyn Simon Lampton, married to trophy wife Karen undergoes an identity crisis. He came from poverty but hauled himself up through education and now has the kind of life he dreamed of, but he’s still not happy. It’s a disorienting feeling to have everything you hoped for–everything you ever wanted and then feel uncomfortable with the fit.

Simon has an affair with Mereana, an Aboriginal woman who once upon a time, was one of Simon’s patients for a very brief period. She was a prisoner, and shackled to the bed as she gave birth. Years later, Simon runs into Mereana at an airport. She works at the airport cafe and lives alone in a poor South Auckland neighbourhood. Simon, in identity crisis mode, basically used Mereana for sex, running back guiltily to his upscale house and upscale wife after each encounter.

Another part of The Night Book concerns wealthy Roza and wealthy David Hallwright, who is running for PM. Karen is swept up by proximity to the Hallwrights and her fawning awe has simply made Simon, who is feeling alienated, like her even less. The Hallwrights in Soon now have a child together, and they are connected to the Lamptons by Elke, the child adopted by Simon and Karen.

Soon finds Simon and Karen in holiday mode, and seemingly best buds, with Roza and David Hallwright (now PM) at their palatial retreat in the “exclusive beach community of Rotokauri.” The Hallwright estate is known as “the Wedding Cake” which gives the reader a good idea of the ostentatiousness of the residence. Also at the compound are various people employed by the Hallwrights–including their coach, “the muscular Garth.” Then there’s Ed Miles (Minister of Police) his wife Juliet, and the Deputy PM known as The Cock (wonder why??) and his stunningly superficial wife Sharon. Before the election, Simon felt out of place at the party fundraisers for Hallwright and so it’s no shock to learn that he feels out of place here too. Over the years, though, he’s formed a relationship of sorts with David, and that’s probably a reflection of how the social standing and the wealth of the Hallwrights has infiltrated his brain. Karen mixes well with the other wives, but while Karen and Roza appear to get along, it’s an uneasy truce built around Elke. Karen loves the celebrity status of bathing in the Hallwrights’ orbit, and while Simon lounges at the pool and enjoys the luxuries of holidaying with the Hallwrights, he feels a little out of place as a minion.

The secret he lived with, was comfortable with, had never regretted: Karen was a cover, she was a symbol of his success, she was necesssary and dear and he’d be lost without her, but he’d never been in love with her. Shamed by his childhood, he’d done everything to remake himself, he’d accumulated career, kids, house, cars, trappings, trappings. Karen.

It’s hard to imagine wanting to hang out with these people unless you are one of them. Sharon and Karen ogle the good looking hunks hired by the Hallwrights making tasteless comments, and Hallwright has a way of ignoring anyone (Simon’s daughter Claire for example) who ever challenges his opinions. Yes you have to drink the cool-aid to hang out with the Hallwrights.

So far, Simon has managed to get off scot-free from his affair with Mereana. Karen is clueless but interestingly, Simon choses to confide in Roza. But Simon’s past is about to catch up with him when a reporter begins asking questions about Mereana. I liked The Night Book a lot, but wasn’t as keen on Soon. For this reader, the characters were not as interesting, and the book is peppered with stories that Roza tells Johnny. They might be fun if you’re four.

Ladder of Years: Anne Tyler

Men who leave their families is a common theme in books (and life) but in Anne Tyler’s Ladder of Years, it’s the wife who leaves. Delia Grinstead, housewife, married to Dr. Grinstead and mother of 3 simply walks away from the annual family holiday wearing only her beach clothes but (handily) carrying the family’s holiday money in her bag.

There’s some back story to this sudden departure. Delia’s father was a widowed doctor who hired young Dr Sam Grinstead as a partner. Delia remembers how she and her older sisters, Linda and Eliza sat on the couch as if on display for Sam and how they vied for his attention over dinner. Delia, at 17, didn’t think she ‘stood’ a chance,’ but Sam picked Delia to marry, according to one long time patient, as Linda was “too short and the middle one is too plump.”

Delia’s life, in many ways has been mapped out, but she still has the life many would envy. Sam is a responsible, if not overly attentive husband, and there are no economic hardships. Following her father’s death, Delia, Sam and their children still live in her father’s home (inherited in a 3-way split with her sisters) and she handles all the office work for Sam. One day at the supermarket, Adrian, a good-looking man, who spies his ex-wife shopping, asks Delia to pretend to be his girlfriend. From this moment, it’s as though Delia, a romance novel reader, sees her life through new eyes. Her husband takes her for granted, her teenage children are rude and alienated. She’s flattered by Adrian’s attention, and a budding relationship forms between Delia and her new acquaintance. The fact that Adrian makes his living from a quarterly newsletter focused on time travel doesn’t seem to sink in. When Sam finds out and confronts Delia, she walks out of the family holiday and out of her life.

Delia ends up in Bay Borough, a small town with very limited services and very limited employment opportunities. She takes a room at a boarding house owned by real estate agent Belle, and gets a job with the only lawyer in town. Over the 18 months, Delia makes several friends, Belle of course, who is always stalking the next married man, Vanessa, a single mother, Joel, the high school principal and his son Noah and Joel’s ex wife Ella.

I liked this book even though the characters are all impossibly nice even the grumpy ones. At one point a well-heeled 67 year old man, Nat (Noah’s grandfather) who lives in a retirement home marries Binky a 35 year old who works in the gift shop, and it’s presented as though Nat’s daughters are unreasonable shrews to be alarmed or to think that Binky is after Nat’s $$. C’mon.

Delia, who is suffering from grief at her father’s death, isn’t given to a great deal of inner speculation which seems odd as she is intelligent and thoughtful, but she does mull over her love of romance novels and Sam’s tepid courtship. Neither does she spend much time thinking about her children. But the lack of communication goes both ways. Again I found it odd. Delia has never been alone in her life, and now she is untethered with a few belongings that can fit in a cardboard box. She is remarkably self-contained for someone who has literally never been alone in her life, and for this reader she wasn’t a realistic character. Also Sam remains one dimensional. Delia’s sister Linda thinks that Sam “couldn’t wait” to get his hand on their father’s practice, but it’s a dying practice with Sam making housecalls for hypochondriacs in the middle of the night. There are plenty of hints that it hasn’t been easy for Sam; for example how Delia’s father, supposedly retired, would pick up the phone extension and chime in when patients called Sam in the middle of the night. For this reader, Sam was either unambitious or wanted to stick around for Delia’s sake.

There’s some great irony here–Sam and Joel are both old-maidish, boring men and Delia is either attracted to them or they are attracted to her. Delia and Joel’s ex, Ella have more in common than Delia cares to admit. There’s not much passion here; it’s all a bit quiet and tepid (apart from Belle who is the spiciest character). But that said, I enjoyed the book.

One of the best scenes takes place around a bleak Thanksgiving dinner at Belle’s house when her latest married man dumps her and goes back to his Mrs and their 6 week-old baby. Belle is initially inconsolable, but then she realises that there’s a married man sitting right at her table. It doesn’t matter that Donald is there with his wife. The flattery rolls out as Belle describes Donald as a “gorgeous man” an “important executive” and it only gets worse when Belle encourages Donald to talk about his college sports career:

Everyone was watching Belle. Open-mouthed and breathless, miraculously recovered, Belle stroked her topmost button with a hypnotic, circular motion and kept her damp-lashed eyes focused raptly on Donald’s lips.

I wondered how readers would feel if Sam was the bolter instead of his wife. Delia takes off without as much as a note, and there are very few exchanges with Sam or her children. If Sam left and did the same (without child support) would he have any reader sympathy? In a way the book is about starting over, new beginnings and how we tend to replicate patterns of behaviour. Delia and Nat are prime examples of that ‘go around the board and get it right this time’ thinking. I won’t give spoilers but the ending left many questions as … in a way… is history repeating itself? Ditching and moving on when there are complications and baggage.

Playing Happy Families: Julian Symons (1994)

“You’ve said they’re what’s called a close-knit family, and that always makes me shiver a bit.”

Playing Happy Families from Julian Symons opens on the 30th wedding anniversary of John and Eleanor Midway. 58-year-old John, a business executive, a man of regular habits, eats his usual Saturday morning breakfast which is cooked by Eleanor, a housewife who is very proud of her kitchen amd its high-end appliances. The entire domestic scene is described as one might describe a painting in a gallery.

So we see them in the kitchen with its long, narrow table covered with heat-resistant plastic, he rucking into bacon and tomatoes, she confining herself to coffee and dry toast. They present an image of English bourgeois life, a couple not at all self-satisfied, aware of their luck being somehow remote from the problems that harass many of their seniors and juniors, problems about a place to live, children’s education, money.

The opening description of this married cpuple is well done as it captures a moment in the life of the Midway family: the last day before their lives turn to hell. The Midways celebrate their anniversary with their son David and his wife, Mary, daughter Jenny and her boss Louis Meyers, and John’s bachelor brother, Giles, who is a judge. Also joining the celebration are surprise visitors from America: Eleanor’s son (from her first marriage) Eversley Grayson, his wife Sally Lou and their 2 children.

The next day, Jenny, who works in an art gallery, leaves for lunch and never returns. DS Catchpole leads the investigation and quickly discovers that Jenny was a bit of a mystery. While she is loved by many, she has bad taste in men, and according to her roommate, model, Patsy, Jenny had many short-term relationships with a wide range of men, including boxer Gabriel Lewis, betting shop owner, Alex Garrod and upper class Rupert Baxter. There seems to be no pattern to the men she selected just that she picked them up, had sex a few times and then dumped them. A theory develops that Jenny simply met the wrong man….

The book explores racism through the attitudes Jenny’s boyfriends towards her black roommate, Patsy, and there’s the police attitudes towards Gabriel Lewis, the black boxer who soon emerges as the main suspect. The weakest part of the book is a sub-plot (or avenue of investigation) involving art. The most interesting aspect of the book to this reader was the way the crime transformed the family. John takes Jenny’s disappearance the hardest, and he is certain she’s dead. Eleanor, however, with hints of earlier discontent, is galvanised into action. John has always been confident and in charge, and now that he’s overwhelmed by depression, Eleanor starts making her own decisions. She agrees to a television interview and starts a new career. We all react to shock, stress and grief in different ways:

It is said that times of crisis are tests of personality. What is certainly true is that they often reveal strengths and weaknesses unknown to their possessors. After the first shock of Jenny’s disappearance Eleanor was conscious of a kind of bounding energy and enthusiasm that demanded an outlet. She had an itch to be doing something, and a belief that no matter what it was her actions would somehow be keeping faith with Jenny, even in some mysterious way preserving her from possible harm.

Hard Girls: J Robert Lennon

At first appearances, 35-year-old Jane Pool is a person with a seemingly staid respectable life, but it’s a life that doesn’t fit–she’s married, has a daughter and has a close relationship with her father, Professor Pool. But scraping away these details, her marriage is in trouble, she’s an ex-con, her twin sister, Lila is incommunicado and her mother, Annabel disappeared 20 years earlier.

The story kicks off when Jane receives what appears to be a spam email, but Jane recognises it as a message from her sister. Years earlier Jane and Lila established a code using E. Nesbit’s book, The Railway Children. The sisters have not seen each other for over 10 years but now Lila has contacted Jane because she has a lead on Annabel’s whereabouts. Jane, already on probation as far as her husband and mother-in-law are concerned, packs lightly, knowing that she’s ditching her marriage and motherhood:

This was the thing they’d gone to therapy for, his patronizing, sexist fear that her distant past would rise and overwhelm her, leave her drugged and drunk in some alley, send her back to prison. The therapy hadn’t worked, because Chance hadn’t wanted to believe she could be trusted.

Following convoluted instructions, Jane finally meets her sister, and together they go searching for their mother. The story goes back and forth between the past and the present. While Jane and Lila follow their mother’s trail, Professor Pool removes his gun from this safe. …

It probably was not to my advantage as a reader that I read (and loved) Familiar, Happyland and Castle. (Ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd favs), and due to those reading experiences, I had certain content expectations–which to be honest is not fair at all to the author. Hard Girls is a crime novel which explores family loyalties, identity and the memories that form our histories. While Lila has taken the unconventional path, Jane has chosen safety, but those unanswered questions nag at the periphery of her existence. On another note, IMO Chance had a point about Jane being sucked back into her dark past. One minute she’s respectable and the next she’s nicking a car from a woman at an airport. Tsk Tsk.

Review copy.

California Bear: Duane Swierczynski

If something is too good to be true, well guess what … it probably is. But ex-con Jack Queen, released for a murder that … yes … he actually committed, is grateful to retired LAPD officer Cato Hightower for all the time and energy he spent working on Jack’s case. The whole case hinged on one piece of physical evidence, and after the “expert witness” was “publicly exposed as a fraud (and a cokehead)” Hightower popped up, took on the case, and Jack’s conviction was overturned. Jack thinks the pay-off for Hightower will be a split of the “wrongful conviction settlement,” close to 73K–a sum he’ll get for spending all those years behind bars for a crime he now walks away from. But he’s wrong, Hightower’s plans for ‘repayment’ are far more complicated.

In the years since Jack’s incarceration, his daughter, fifteen-year-old Matilda Finnerty “the girl detective” has been living with her aunt and uncle, and Matilda has just been diagnosed with an aggressive form of Leukemia. From her hospital bed, she researches cold cases after promising her English teacher that “she’d solve a murder.” Meanwhile the 72-year-old serial killer named “The California Bear,” who has “eluded justice for close to four decades,” is growing restless.

Here are the main characters:

Cato Hightower, retired LAPD

Ex-con Jack Queen

Martha Finnerty, 15 years old and faced with a devastating diagnosis.

The California Bear–a sadistic serial killer who has maintained a life of “strict disciplined restraint,” but whose appetites can no longer be controlled (reminds me of BTK).

The California Bear’s wife–aka “The Queen of Mars” (according to her husband.) Her main aim in life is to hide the Nutter Butter cookies from her murdering diabetic spouse.

Jeanie Hightower, a genealogist.

I really had fun with the way the author created Hightower and the California Bear, both men who are anchored by their wives in very different ways. While The California Bear has “death fantasies” about torturing and murdering his wife, Hightower is in awe of his missus. Also there’s Jack, the ex-con who once out of prison just wants peace and quiet while Hightower smokes weed, boozes, and eats junk food. As is typical Swierczynski, there are twists and turns that you don’t see coming. If you are a fan of Westlake, then you should be a fan of Swierczynski.

Jack looked into the ex-cop’s eyes. “I did it.”

Hightower’s brow furrowed. “Come again?”

“I don’t mean to cast aspersions on all your detective work, or whatever paint-chip bullshit you pulled out of your ass. The last thing I want to do is insult you.”

“No insult taken.”

“But I did it.”

“Did what?”

“Did … it.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“For fuck’s sake Hightower … I actually killed the guy they say I killed. I got drunk and heard where he was, and I ran him over with my car.”

“Yeah,” Hightower replied. “Of course you did. What, you think I’m an idiot.”

There’s an afterword in which Swierczynski explains the genesis of the novel and its touching, personal connections to his life. With this novel, Swierczynski took his considerable gifts, creating an ending that should have been. To quote C.S. Lewis “You can’t go back and change the beginning but you can start where you are and change the ending.”

Review copy.

The Night Book: Charlotte Grimshaw

“Somehow I’ve started to feel the new self peeling away, and the old one’s still there underneath. It never went away”

Two New Zealand upper-class families are set on a trajectory course towards disaster in Charlotte Grimshaw’s novel The Night Book.

Simon Langton is at the top of his game as a gynecologist/obstetrician. He’s married to Karen, and when the book opens, they have two children. Karen wants a third child, but when a pregnancy doesn’t happen she decides to foster a child. Simon isn’t “keen” on the idea, but he “went along with it.” Simon and Karen eventually adopt Elke, a very controlled, silent child who initially has problems sleeping. Years pass and Simon finds that he has a rapport with Elke that he lacks with his own children, Marcus and Claire. When he returns home late at night from work, he sits up to write in his journal, his “night book” as Elke calls it, and Elke sits with him.

With these nights, he was spending more time with her than he did with his own boy and girl. Because of not loving her, he’d allowed her into his night hours and now they shared something. He felt faintly disturbed by this, and worried about his own children, but they didn’t seem bothered.

Years pass. The children are teenagers, and Clare “the most verbally violent person” is at war with her mother. Bitter rows surge over the household and Simon, who “thought how it would be to live alone, without all the fights and bitching and tears,” has the role of peacemaker, but the rows drive a wedge between Simon and Karen. But perhaps the wedge was always there … waiting.

The division between Karen and Simon, fueled by rows between Karen and Clare (Karen thinks that Simon ‘allows’/ permits Clare’s vicious forays) is further expanded by Karen’s intense involvement in the National Party Fundraiser through her friend Trish. Karen and Simon attend fundraisers (much to Simon’s despair) and the whole process makes Karen giddy. Simon, feeling out-of-place and unengaged, loathes the fundraisers, but to Karen it’s a big social event, and she dresses for it:

He didn’t really like the dress. It was something her friend Trish would have persuaded her into: too elaborate, too many frills, as if she’d been wrapped up in Christmas paper. Trish’s circle all had the same hard, affluent, provincial look.

While Karen fawns and swoons like a teenage girl over the new party leader, David Hallwright, Simon finds Roza, David’s second wife (his first wife died of cancer) strangely familiar. As it turns out, the night Simon meets the Hallwrights is a turning point in Simon’s life. He falls off the rails that he’s carefully constructed. Roza Hallwright, who works for a publishing company, is a fundamentally private person who is being dragged into the spotlight. She also falls off the rails, but for different reasons and in a different fashion. There are interesting parallels here. Simon came from harsh poverty. He married Karen, built a great career and has a dream life, but it’s a suit that doesn’t fit. Roza came from wealth but she too has buried her past. Neither of them are comfortable in the lives they have sought:

Everything depended on the mask, and she never took it off, until she started to feel she’d become the person she was impersonating.

Both Simon and Roza’s lives unravel and they careen towards destruction. Simon becomes entangled with a former patient, and Roza, happily snorting cocaine, seeks out the author of a rejected manuscript, a disgraced policeman.

I just watched the television series version, The Bad Seed. While the book is an engaging character study, the TV series is a murder mystery. The characters were altered: Roza more is manipulative and not sympathetic, while Karen is nicer. The series also highlighted Simon’s brother Ford, and its ending was … well … OTT.

A Small-Town Marriage: The Marchesa Colombi (1885)

In A Small-Town Marriage, a delightfuly light-hearted tale of young love and the terror of looming spinsterhood, the narrator, Gaudenzia or ‘Denza’ lives with her sister Caterina (‘Titina,’) her neurotic father, unsuccessful notary Pietro Dellara, and her father’s elderly spinster aunt. In the background are the Bonellis–distant cousins who are far better off. Denza’s mother died before her first birthday, and the bleak family home is … well… odd. It’s strewn with pots full of dead plants, and the living room is an un-visited museum. Pietro is a fanatic about exercise, and he hustles his daughters from bed early, marching them up and down the roads, marking how many kilometers they have traveled.

The tale is told in retrospect:

It would be difficult to imagine a drearier childhood, or one more monotonous and joyless than mine. When I think back on it, after so many, many years, I can still feel the endless gloom of that dead calm going on and on, unchanging, all through the long stretches of time that separated the few events that took place in our family life.

But things appear to be looking up when Pietro, realising that his first wife’s dowry is running out, announces that he is getting remarried. To Denza, her stepmother, a woman they see at church, is “an old lady,” but in reality, she’s 43:

She had had the top of her head shaved, because her hair was very thin, and she hoped that it would grow in thicker. But it had not grown back at all, and she always wore a wig over the shaved part.

Denza and Titina are excited about the marriage as it breaks the monotony of their humdrum, dreary lives. Denza notes “Oh, what fun we had!” But then the visits and the wedding are over, and things begin to change. The stepmother gives birth to a baby boy and Denza and her sister have to assume household duties in order “to learn to keep a house in order” for the days when they (will eventually) marry. Denza takes over the care of the new baby, and soon she is lugging him around everywhere, but when she is told by her sister that she is beautiful, Denza begins to imagine the man who will fall in love with her.

After a rare treat–an evening at the theatre with the Bonelli cousins–Maria Bonelli tells Denza that she has made a conquest. Denza is excited and only momentarily “taken aback” by the news that her new conquest is obese.

“Manzzucchetti. You know, the son of those old landowners who live out toward Sant’ Eufemia. He’s an only child, and very rich. He watched you all evening through his opera glasses.”

“Oh what a shame that I didn’t see him! What’s he like? Is he handsome?”

“Yes … well he’s … he’s … he’s a bit fat. But if you look closely he has nice features. He’s a good-looking young man. And he’s undergoing treatment for obesity.”

And so this delightful story unfolds. Mazzucchetti is hardly a girl’s dream come true, but Denza, in her drab life and its endless boredom, clings to the notion of a secret love. The rotund Mazzucchetti becomes Denza’s Romeo. She dreams of him, longs for him, and lives for an occasional glimpse of this mostly absent love-interest. He’s not much of a dream, but it’s enough for Denza. He becomes her desire, and it’s a dream that keeps her going for years as her sister and her cousins marry, until another suitor pops up. Always there’s the spectre of spinsterhood–Pietro’s “old aunt,” a woman who lives like a spider in the household–“a little old spinster as dried up as a herring, who slept in the kitchen where, in order to hide her bed, she had put up a screen behind which she spent her life in the dark.”

The story, which never takes the turns this reader expected, is told without self-pity and matter of factly by Denza, a girl who accepts life, and whose tale is without villains but underscored by hope and the economic reality of the times.

Translated by Paula Spurgin Paige

Kids Run the Show: Delphine de Vigan

Delphine de Vigan is not a predictable writer, and by that I mean that she cannot be slotted into some convenient genre category. Kids Run the Show is a topical novel that examines YouTube and these highly popular family channels–channels that are set in a family situation and which supposedly depict (idealised) family life with–of course–good old consumerism thrown in. The parents in these channels throw open their lives to viewers–the more successful the channel, the more viewers/subscribers and the more money earned. The lives displayed on these channels often fabricate family life, a semblance of family life, a form of Reality TV, and since real names are used, there’s little privacy, but then isn’t that the entire idea?

The borders between private and public had disappeared long ago. This staging of the self, of one’s family, one’s everyday life, the pursuit of “likes”

In Kids Run the Show Mélanie, a young married woman, the mother of 2 children, 8 year-old Sam and 6 year-old Kimmy, runs Happy Recess a French YouTube Channel which has 5 million subscribers running right behind Minibus Team (Mélanie’s ” main rival.“)

In her past, Mélanie longed to be a reality TV star but she didn’t make the grade for various tacky reasons, but now she’s correcting that with her immensely popular YouTube channel. As a young mother, feeling like a failure for blowing her shot at fame, Mélanie, suffering from depression, became addicted to Facebook–and more importantly–addicted to the “likes.” Mélanie fell into a groove space with other mothers and honed her skills, but eventually she outgrow Facebook and launched into YouTube.

The channel started small at first but then grew into this massive enterprise, and has “an annual income of over one million euros.” But with the pressure on to always increase subscribers, Mélanie makes more videos, and it’s become obvious that Kimmy, whose whole waking life is geared towards YouTube, doesn’t enjoy the camera. And Mélanie’s on-camera, sugary gag-worthy efforts to gloss over Kimmy’s unhappiness have not gone unnoticed. When Kimmy is kidnapped, it seems as though there are plenty of suspects–including the owner of the rival channel and the Knight of the Net, a man who “denounces the dangers and excesses of YouTube.”

Clara, a young policewoman specializing in evidence analysis, begins digging into the case, and as a character, she’s a good foil for Mélanie. Clara’s boss, an older man who acts as another foil to Clara, receives an education in YouTube finances.

“most people love us. And they tell us, they write to us, they come hundreds of miles to see us. It’s crazy how much love we get. You can’t imagine. But recently, there’ve been rumors, some bad gossip, and now there are people who are full of resentment. They want bad things to happen to us. Because they’re jealous.”

“What are they jealous of Madame Claux?” he asked, as gently as possible.

“Our happiness.”

The book contains some fascinating info about early reality TV programmes in France (loved storming The Loft) and explores the issue of child exploitation and the psychological damage suffered by these children. For this reader, the identity of the kidnapper was a bit contrived.

Roughly once a month, Mélanie Claux spends a whole day sending out surveys to her subscribers. They’re the ones who decide everything: which cereal Kimmy and Sammy should eat for breakfast, which cartoon they’re going to watch, which sweatshirt they’re going to wear. She asks the question on her Instagram account and, in the space of a few minutes, gets her results. The day itself is the subject of a new video, edited and enhanced with graphic effects, then posted on YouTube.

And herein lies the dilemma at the heart of ‘reality tv.’ if it’s shaped by viewers’ votes, “likes,” etc, and then is subsequently molded towards ever-increasing viewer numbers, where is the reality in that? Or is reality popularity? When fabrication replaces reality, does fabrication become reality?

Translated by Alison Anderson

Review copy.