Lucy by the Sea: Elizabeth Strout

It was inevitable that the COVID lockdown entered the realm of fiction: after all, it is an historic event and to be honest, I was rather interested to see how authors incorporated the many aspects of life during COVID into novels. That brings me to Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy by the Sea, a seemingly child-like title which belies the reality… or does it?

Lucy is a reappearing character in several Strout novels: My Name is Lucy Barton (have to backtrack to read this one), Anything is Possible, and Oh, William. In Oh, William, Elizabeth Strout gave us a first hand look at the after-marriage of Lucy Barton and her X-William. In that novel, writer Lucy Barton, freshly widowed from her second husband, becomes embroiled in the life of her self-focused X when his much-younger wife, unsurprisingly, moves onto fresher pastures. William is a Dickhead. Selfish, self-focused, not, I suppose a ‘bad’ man, but in his prime a serial adulterer who now aged 70 seems as little aware of the damage he caused as when he had numerous affairs.

Lucy by the Sea takes us to COVID lockdown. Lucy, like many people, hears about the virus tangentially in the news but William, who after all is/was a scientist, takes the news very seriously indeed and drives Lucy to a rental house in Maine for the duration. This is not an action novel by any means–instead this is Lucy’s tale as she sits out the virus–until vaccination time that is. So it’s a novel about waiting, watching the news and missing loved ones. In other words, this is a relatable novel. Bob Burgess makes an appearance as a supporting character. He helps arrange the Maine rental, and when the situation allows, he and his wife Margaret visit Lucy and William, maintaining social distance of course. For Lucy, this period takes on a dream like-quality. Watching the news, seeing the deaths, from a safe distance, seems almost surreal. Lucy and William’s two daughters Chrissy and Becka, each have their own crises during lockdown and Lucy cannot run to their sides to help. She can only wait for news at a distance. Bob Burgess (The Burgess Boys) is a kindred spirit to Lucy and helps with William and Lucy’s Maine transition.

In Oh, William, a highly enjoyable read, a great deal of the delight came from Lucy’s observations of William, a selfish sod whose world consists of two daughters, ex-wife Lucy and his much younger wife and third daughter who have just left him. William’s two adult daughters and Lucy seem to spend a great deal of time worrying about William–a man whose self-focus guarantees he puts himself first. In Lucy by the Sea, William appears to be thinking of someone else for a change.

When I read the synopsis of the novel, I thought Poor Lucy… imagine being in lockdown with that prick for a year.. but Elizabeth Strout chooses not to play the novel that way. I had imagined them driving each other crazy, and while that does happen to a mild degree, lockdown pushes William into protective mode, and brings panic attacks to Lucy. What happened to William’s dickheadedness? Or does COVID bring out the best in William–at last? Is his desire to ‘save’ Lucy sincere or is her just using COVID to control her? Strout does a wonderful job of recreating a COVID lockdown experience (many varieties exist): the ennui, the feeling of suspended animation, the heartbreak of being unable to have physical contact with family, and the bitter crunch of being housebound 24/7 with someone whose habits drive you around the bend. At some point, I became disappointed with the plot, but I came to that conclusion too soon. Ultimately, Elizabeth Strout did not disappoint me. There’s a wonderful scene with William and Lucy in which William confesses that he wished he had lived his life better:

“Oh Lucy, come on. I sit here and think over my life , and I think, Who have I been? I have been an idiot.”

“In what way?”

I asked him. And interestingly he answered first about his profession. “I have taught student after student after student, but did I make a real contribution to science? No.”

I opened my mouth, but he held up his hand to stop me.

“And on a personal level, look how I have lived my life.” I thought he must have been talking about his affairs. But he was not.

Lucy had a terrible childhood, and now in her 60s, she is, to this reader, surprisingly childlike. That kind of abuse creates permanent damage, yet somehow Lucy is cocooned by her belief in the beauty of the world. In her head she has created an imaginary mother–a loving kind mother who supports her and comforts her. It’s a great coping mechanism. Lucy is a believable character because she is so consistent. She never acts outside of the character created by Strout. To this reader, Lucy is remarkable because she is so good in spite of all her horrible experiences. But, at the same time, even though Lucy is good and believable, she is a little vanilla. Lucy is an observer of the world more than anything, and she is a passive character. In Oh, William, William’s dickheadedness added spike and spice to the plot, and there were times when even Lucy got sick of him. Olive Kitteridge appears in the sidelines and there were times I longed for Olive’s acidic tongue. She would make short work of William.

There’s a sequel here. I know it. And the big boom is coming.

review copy.

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The Burgess Boys: Elizabeth Strout

You can leave Maine, but it doesn’t leave you.

The relationships between siblings, the reliability of memory, and mid-life marital problems form Elizabeth Strout’s The Burgess Boys. The Burgess ‘Boys’ are actually middle-aged men, Jim and Bob Burgess, but there’s a sister too, Susan. Jim and Bob moved from Maine to New York and both brothers now live in Brooklyn. Susan remains in Shirley Falls, Maine, and while the brothers see each other a lot, they seldom see Susan. This may be due to geography, or a childhood trauma, but it’s also partly due to Jim and Bob’s reluctance to return to Maine. Also Susan is sour, and she’s become worse since her husband departed to Sweden, leaving her with her son, 19-year-old Zach.

Bob, the far sweeter brother, is divorced. His long-term girlfriend just dumped him, ostensibly because he’s too close to his ex, Pam, who is now remarried and also lives in New York. Jim, an extremely successful attorney is married to Helen. The three siblings are brought together in crisis mode when Zach tosses a pig’s head into a Shirley Falls Mosque. Facing prosecution, Jim and Bob become involved in the case, and by the time the book ends, everyone emerges into a new reality.

Jim has celebrity status thanks to successfully defending a popular singer on murder charges. This, however, was the pinnacle of his career, and he’s never quite hit that high note since. When the novel begins, Helen, his supportive wife deeply resents Jim’s involvement in his nephew’s case. She dislikes her “grim sister-in-law” and dislikes Maine. Underneath all these resentments and dislikes, is the unacknowledged feeling that she and Jim are drifting apart. Poor Helen–although her snobbery makes her a less sympathetic character.

Bob’s career is modest next to Jim’s but then again, 51-year-old Bob is a modest man. He is blighted by an accident which killed his father–an accident which he caused. This incident is a permanent cloud on every aspect of Bob’s life. And that isn’t helped AT ALL by the fact that Jim constantly belittles him, calling him “knucklehead,” “Slob-dog,” “cretinized bozo.” It’s all ‘supposed’ to be good fun, but it’s mean spirited especially when combined with all the other insults Jim throws Bob’s way. Then there’s Susan who loves Jim and thinks he’s the only one who can help her in the criminal case against Zach. She’s also nasty to Bob and doesn’t think he is capable doing anything correctly.

Bob is always in Jim’s shadow and asks himself:

What was this thing that Jimmy had? The intangible, compelling part of Jimmy?

Some people ooze confidence, and when Jimmy makes a confession, well two confessions, Bob’s world is rocked to its foundations. Jimmy, who has a cruel side, typically fails to grasp the emotional impact Bob feels. Jim seems to have a history of failing to understand how his actions impact others. That’s evident when he waltzes into Shirley Falls and manages to piss everyone off. There’s an influx of Somalis into Shirley Falls and they aren’t integrating well.

The novel is a touch on the sentimental side. I liked how the novel shows that siblings all have certain places carved on the family totem pole, and that while they share childhoods, they may not have quite the same recollections. Bob is scripted as the screw-up in childhood, and he grew into that role. He’s actually successful, but he still carries that figurative screw-up hat. I rather liked Susan in spite of her sour moods. We get a few scenes of Pam who is now living the life she thought she always wanted in high society New York, and yet she still craves the ever-loyal Bob’s company. Pam, a character we see in Oh, William, is a parasitologist and at one point Jim tells Bob that Pam is rather like a parasite herself:

She didn’t like her childhood, so she took yours. Then she got to New York and looked around and saw people had kids and she’d better get some too, and while she was at it she’d better get some money as well, because New York has a lot of that too.

Oh William!: Elizabeth Strout

“Intimacy became a ghastly thing.”

Elizabeth Strout’s Oh William! is the third Lucy Barton novel; Lucy’s story begins in My Name is Lucy Barton, and she also appears in Anything is Possible. In this third novel, Lucy, a successful writer living in New York, is newly widowed following the death of her much-loved second husband, David. In the aftermath of David’s death, Lucy finds herself thinking back over her life–in particular her complicated relationship with her first husband, William.

My second husband, David, died last year, and in my grief for him I have felt grief for William as well. Grief is such a–oh, it is such a solitary thing; this is the terror of it, I think. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you.

Lucy and William were married for almost 20 years, and they had 2 daughters together. Lucy came from “terribly bleak poverty,” and from snippets she drops, there’s a past of horrible abuse. The feeling of security and love that her relationship with William initially gave her was blasted into outer space when she discovered his serial infidelities which ended with William marrying, and subsequently divorcing, the ‘other woman,’ Joanne. William and Joanne had an affair for at least 6 years and were married for just 7 years. William “understood this about Joanne, that her intelligence was moderate and his attraction to her all those years had simply been the fact that she was not his wife, Lucy.”

For many years William, who works at NYU, has been married to his third wife, Estelle, 22 years his senior, and they have a child together. Lucy, who has the occasional social contact with William at social events held at his home and sometimes meetings with just William, begins to sniff that there are issues afoot. She notices that at 69, William is beginning to show his age, and at first attributes this to the night terrors William is experiencing– night terrors that are connected to his mother, Catherine. William confides in Lucy–not Estelle– about the night terrors, but perhaps he’s motivated by the fact that Lucy knew Catherine who was long dead before wife number 3 popped up. Later, Lucy overhears Estelle making an odd comment to a party guest; it’s a remark that causes Lucy a vague disquiet. Lucy’s husband dies and so Lucy shelves concerns about William, but later, Estelle, who has the most sanguine temperament, departs, possibly for younger pastures. Hardly a shock given the huge age difference. Suddenly it’s all hands on deck as both of Lucy and William’s adult daughters and Lucy begin to be concerned about William’s mental and physical well-being.

William’s mother, Catherine, was a strange creature, and while Lucy says “we loved her. Oh, we loved her; she seemed central to our marriage,” I can’t help but wonder if Lucy loved the idea of loving her mother-in-law. Catherine, who also came from harsh poverty and seemed to ‘get this’ about Lucy, didn’t always use that knowledge well. She patronized Lucy and occasionally acted in ways that could be construed as deliberately cruel. Loved the bit about how William and his mother dumped Lucy with the two small kids while they sat “somewhere else on the plane.” But that’s the thing about Lucy, her great ability to forgive and to understand people. Catherine is long-dead when the tale begins, but some great mystery from her past rears its head and causes William to ask Lucy to accompany him on a road trip to Maine. Meanwhile William and Lucy’s 2 adult daughters wonder if their parents will get back together,

While I really enjoyed the novel, I felt some frustration with Lucy, so I was glad when, on the Maine trip she pushed back on his swollen sense of self-importance. William turned out to be such a dick during their marriage, and still seems oblivious about that, so there’s a lot to forgive. Lucy manages to do just that. With William’s latest crisis, Lucy comes to the rescue and it’s all about William. Lucy is newly widowed and devastated but William’s troubles selfishly trump all in the manner emotion eaters apply to dominate the lives of others. Things are only important if William thinks they are important. No one else’s problems register–only William’s problems. William is lonely. Well, boo-hoo. Lucy is lonely too, but William is always the only important person–according to William, Lucy and their daughters. Of course, these things happen in every family. Emotional hierarchy: Handle someone with kid gloves as they are sensitive, make sure you call so-and-so as they will be put out if you don’t blah blah. Back to one of my favourite all-time quotes from Amy Witting:

This world. This human race. It isn’t divided into sexes. Everybody thinks it’s divided into sexes but it isn’t. It’s the givers and the takers. The diners and the dinners.

This may be William’s story, but I think it’s more Lucy’s. She weaves in so many marvelous memories, and one thing that comes through loud and clear is that this woman who could be bitter and hard, instead has managed to cherish the positive in her life. The door is closed on many painful subjects, and I’m all for that. She tells her tale tentatively, creating a sort of intimacy with the reader, as if she’s still working out things in her head, so she uses phrases such as ““I need to say this,” and “please try to understand this.” She comes to revise her opinions about several people she thought she knew. I have to add here–the horrible comment Lucy made to Catherine as she was dying. Was this revenge? Or naivety?

Probably not the best idea to go on a road trip with one’s EX. Especially if he spent years deceiving you and now expects you to hold his hand and give him moral support:

As we drove I suddenly had a visceral memory of what a hideous thing marriage was for me at time those years with William: a familiarity so dense it filled up the room, your throat almost clogged with the knowledge of the other so that it seemed to practically press into your nostrils–the odor of the other’s thoughts, the self-consciousness of every spoken word, the slight flicker of an eyebrow barely raised, the barely perceptible tilting of the chin; no one but the other one would know what it meant; but you could not be free living like that, not ever.

Finally this wonderful scene illustrates William’s incredible ability to see himself as the centre of everyone’s universe.

“Did you ever have an affair with Estelle? I mean did you ever have an affair while you were married to her?” I was surprised that I asked this, that I even wondered this.

And he stopped chewing the toast he had just bitten into, and then he swallowed and said, “An affair? No, I might have messed around a few times, but I never had an affair.”

“You messed around?” I asked.

“With Pam Carlson. But only because I’d known her for years and years, and we’d had a stupid thing way back, so it didn’t feel like anything–because it wasn’t”

“Pam Carlson?” I said. “You mean that woman at your party?”

He glanced at me, chewing. “Yeah. You know, not a lot or anything. I mean I knew her from years ago, back when she was married to Bob Burgess.” “You were doing her then?”

“Oh, a little.” He must not have realized as he said this that he had been married to me at the time. And then I saw it arrive on his face, I felt I saw this. He said, “Oh Lucy, what can I say?”

Indeed.

The upbeat, life-affirming conclusion brings an epiphany to Lucy, and she deserves it. She experiences many shifting emotions throughout the book and finds still at this late stage in life, there is always new knowledge to be gained about people:

But we are all mythologies, mysterious. We are all mysteries, is what I mean.

Olive Kitteridge (I must bring Olive into this) and Lucy are opposites in many ways. Olive is caustic while Lucy is loving and generous. But both Olive and Lucy are outsiders for different reasons. Olive Kitteridge should have had dinner with Lucy and her EX. I would have liked to have been there for the fireworks.

Review copy

Olive, Again: Elizabeth Strout

“God, have I seen enough of this crap! Come on, Jack.”

I was sorry to see the last of Olive when I closed the final page of Elizabeth Strout’s novel, Olive Kitteridge. For those who have yet to meet Olive (in either the book or the TV series version) Olive Kitteridge is a retired Math teacher who lives in Crosby Maine with her husband, pharmacist Henry. In many ways they are a mismatched couple (she’s domineering and abrasive and Henry is tender and kind) but in other ways Henry and Olive supplement one another.  In Olive Kitteridge, which isn’t as much a novel as much as interconnected stories, we meet not just Olive, Henry and their son Christopher, but also a range of characters who live in Crosby, and these characters form a rich tapestry of small town life. Some people really like Olive for her quirky outspokenness ; others find her abrasive and dislike her.

It doesn’t take too many pages before you realise that Olive is a formidable character. She can at times have incredible insight and empathy towards people but she is a tyrant at home. Both gentle Henry and unhappy Christopher are overshadowed and dominated by Olive, and in Olive Kitteridge, Christopher breaks with his mother and Henry suffers from illness which takes Olive by surprise.

Now we’re back again: life has moved on for Olive. At the end of Olive Kitteridge, Olive meets Jack Kennison a retired widower, a Harvard professor who’s been eased out of his position by sexual harassment charges. Olive, Again picks up this story thread with 74-year-old Jack and Olive connecting after acknowledging old age and loneliness. Both Jack and Olive are estranged from their children, and Jack, a much more confident and self-assured man than Henry, manages to roll with Olive’s sharp temper and lashing tongue.

The stories bring a host of characters into play: people who drift in and out of Olive’s life and sometimes we see Olive pass by the lives of other characters who are central to a specific story. Over time, Olive finds that Henry recedes into the background and she goes through various conclusions about her marriage and Henry (some of which are reassessed again before the book concludes.)

The truth is that Olive did not understand why age had brought with it a kind of hard-heartedness toward her husband. But it was something she had seemed unable to help, as though the stone wall that had rambled along between them during the course of their long marriage–a stone wall that separated them but also provided unexpected dips of moss-covered warm spots where sunshine would flicker between them in a sudden laugh of understanding–had become tall and unyielding, and not providing flowers in its crannies but some ice storm frozen along it instead. In other words, something had come between them that seemed insurmountable. 

I’m not going to talk about all the stories: just the ones that stick in my mind. One of my favourite, yet disturbing stories in the collection, Cleaning, features Kaley, a young girl who cleans houses. She cleans the home of a strange couple, a teacher and her husband who, according to Olive is “going dopey-dope.” Kaley finds that she cannot talk to anyone about what is happening at the house–it’s a situation that creeps up on her, and while the subject doesn’t come up with Olive, somehow Olive’s frank take on the couple clears the air.

There’s also another brilliant story, Labor about a tedious baby shower. which illustrates how Olive doesn’t fit in. Olive sits there with the other women aware of how she’s supposed to act: she’s bored and impatient; she knows she’s supposed to ohhh and ahhh over the gifts with all the other women, and she tries to put on a good show of interest and attention but it’s really more than she can bear.

A third gift was presented to Marlene’s daughter, and Olive distinctly felt distress. She could not imagine how long it would take this child to unwrap every goddamned gift on that table and put the ribbons so carefully on the goddamned paper plate, and then everyone had to wait–wait-while every gift was passed around. She thought she had never heard of such foolishness in her life. 

In Light Olive visits a former student, Cindy, who has cancer. Most of Cindy’s friends avoid visiting or if they visit, the C word isn’t mentioned. But no subject is taboo to Olive; she doesn’t recognize boundaries. Olive’s graceless blunt manner is just what this woman needs and for once Olive’s matter of fact approach is welcomed.

In The End of the Civil War Days, Olive plays a tiny role while the main focus is a married couple who separate their living areas with yellow duct tape, so that they each have half of the dining room, the living room etc. and necessary communicate exists through addressing the dog “The main issue, naturally, is the television,” as with two televisions husband and wife compete with sound until the husband gets earphones. The way some people live for so long that it becomes normal. …. The irony to this story is that a state of civil war reigns at home and the husband is a member of a civil war reenactment group.

(And just as a point, I know a couple who live like this; the husband sleeps outside.)

Somehow these stories sum up a lot about Olive: she’s complicated; she’s impatient and doesn’t fit the roles she finds herself shoved into. She has a difficult time with social relationships and perhaps that’s why outsiders, people on the fringes like her so much. Jack emerges as a main character here. At one point, he reassesses his relationship with his dead wife with the “horrifying rush” that while he loved her, they’d “still squandered what they’d had.” Whereas Henry was dominated and overshadowed by Olive, Jack, who’s well aware that they must enjoy the short time left, simply laughs at Olive’s grumpiness and barbs.

Mental illness is one of the themes of Olive Kitteridge, and while it’s also in Olive, Again other themes are the deep scars left in marriage by infidelities, the rising tide of regret, and aging which of course goes hand in hand with dying. Characters drop off left right and center, and Olive herself become an old lady. Her world shrinks in this book, and while it’s sad, Olive comes to a few revelations about her life and her son Christopher.  At times she struggles to understand how things happened, but she also has some remarkable revelations– as does Jack, who also lives with many regrets and has an unfortunate face-to-face with his Waterloo in Pedicure.

Review copy.

 

Olive Kitteridge: Elizabeth Strout

“Olive had a way about her that was absolutely without apology.”

I saw the miniseries version of Olive Kitteridge, based on the novel by Elizabeth Strout, and this is one of the rare instances that I’m glad I saw the screen version first. The wonderful actress Frances Mcdormand (always entertaining to watch) gave an incredible performance as Olive. A great many adjectives come to mind when I think about Olive. She’s caustic, domineering, and outspoken. Definitely eccentric, she’s the sort of person who provokes a strong reaction. The novel is a series of interconnecting stories; sometimes Olive’s a main character, and other times she’s in the background barely mentioned. Some of the stories are told from Olive’s perspective while others feature the lives of other residents in the town of Crosby, Maine. One of book’s underlying themes is mental illness; there are several characters in the book who show various signs of mental illness, and then there’s Olive. Is the jury out on the mental state of this main character?

So who is Olive Kitteridge? In Elizabeth Strout’s novel, we see Olive, a retired math teacher, who lives in the town of Crosby, Maine where everyone seems to know everyone else.  Olive is a difficult woman. Respected by some, she intimidates others. She has many admirable qualities: she’s intelligent, capable, and confident, but to her family, she’s frequently monstrous because she’s so formidable and domineering. Yet at the same time, she’s capable of incredible sensitivity, but it seems easier for Olive to show kindness and compassion to strangers than to her husband and only child, Christopher.

The novel opens with Pharmacy which is an introduction to Olive’s sweet husband, Henry who works in a pharmacy in the next town. Henry is a steady, kind, considerate gentle man, and we get a view of Henry and his life with Olive when his long-term employee dies and he employs a very naive young newlywed, Denise. Denise is sweet and rather helpless, and at one point, when tragedy strikes, Henry steps into Denise’s life to help her. Olive warns him that “People are never as helpless as you think they are.” 

Pharmacy shows the Kitteridges’ married life with Henry often hesitant to show affection to his prickly wife due to “a darkness that seemed to stand beside her like an acquaintance that would not go away.” Olive isn’t easy to live with and her outbursts are unpredictable. One day, for example, Henry rather “uncharacteristically” complains when Olive refuses to accompany her husband to church:

“Yes, it most certainly is too goddamn much to ask!” Olive had almost spit her fury’s door flung open, “You have no idea how tired I am, teaching all day, going to foolish meetings where the goddamn principal is a moron! Shopping. Cooking. Ironing. Laundry. Doing Christopher’s homework with him! and you—.” She grabbed on to the back of a dining room chair, and her dark hair, still uncombed from its night’s disarrangement, had fallen across her eyes. “You, Mr. Head Deacon Claptrap Nice Guy, expect me to give up my Sunday mornings and go sit among a bunch of snot-wots!” Very suddenly she had sat down in the chair. “Well, I’m sick and tired of it,” she said calmly. “Sick to death.”

In A Little Burst, Christopher finally marries (he’s 38 years-old) and Olive tries to accept  his bossy wife, Suzanne. By the end of the wedding day, Olive loathes her new daughter-in-law. The marriage takes place in Maine, and it’s a humiliating experience for Olive who can’t understand why on earth her son is marrying this woman–but it’s quite obvious that Suzanne is another version of Olive: so Christopher, in essence is marrying his mother. In later chapters, we track Christopher’s marriage and relationships.

In Tulips, Olive makes the mistake of visiting Louise Larkin, a woman Olive used to work with. It’s a strange meeting, and a rare occasion when Olive finds herself outplayed.

Olive is at her best with people outside of any intimate relationships. Living damages and bruises, so we see various characters who ‘cope’ (or not) with an array of tragedies and disasters. Olive’s past led to a wall–a wall of toughness which will not allow tenderness or a moment of weakness. It’s easy to see why she married Henry even though she thinks he’s “irritating” and has a “steadfast way of remaining naive, as though life were just what a Sears catalogue told you it was: everyone standing around smiling.” 

The book is full of memorable characters, but, of course, the ‘star’ here is Olive. Would we want to know Olive? Would we want to be related to Olive? In creating of Olive, author Elizabeth Strout, with compassion and sensitivity, shows the many facets of one very complicated personality.

Olive’s private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as “big bursts” and ” little bursts.” Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well, a friendly clerk at Bradlee’s, let’s say, or the waitress at Dunkin’ Donuts who knows how you like your coffee. Tricky business, really. 

 

Five Days by Douglas Kennedy

“But the truth is, no matter how successful or happy you may consider yourself to be there is always a part of your life that is problematic, or deficient, or a letdown in some way.”

The blurb on the back cover of Five Days includes this:

Douglas Kennedy’s powerful new novel poignantly examines the death of hope, the limitless possibilities of love, and how the entire trajectory of a life can change through one brief encounter.

It’s interesting that the words ‘brief encounter’ appear as this is the film I thought of when I read Douglas Kennedy’s latest book, but while I’d class the 1945 film Brief Encounter as a romance, Five Days isn’t so easily pegged. Yes, there is romance in these pages, but primarily this is a story of how one very unhappy 41-year-old woman faces her unhappiness and decides to do something to change her life. Laura is a married Radiology Technician who works at a hospital in Damariscotta, Maine, and here between the hours of 9-5, she performs scans on patients sent to her as part of the diagnostic  sequence. It’s my personal belief that you can’t work in this sort of job without it impacting your thoughts about life & death, and this is certainly true of Laura who sees people who are dying of cancer on a daily basis. Not that Laura is the one that breaks the news, of course, but she is, nonetheless part of the sequence of events. She’s always been able to handle her job, but lately the job has been getting to her, and she’s internalizing the results: euphoric when nothing is found, and tearful when the scans yield positive results. Peel back a few layers of Laura’s life, and it’s easy to see that her marriage is unhappy and unsatisfying. Add two troubled teenagers to the mix. Trouble then is on the horizon when Laura heads off solo to a conference in Boston where she meets Richard Copeland, a 50-something insurance salesman who is just as unhappy as she is…..

Five Days illustrates perfectly that affairs do not occur in the real world. They exist in a bubble–a very special, fabricated place that is not hampered by everyday concerns, and the novel does an excellent job of showing how very much easier it is for Laura to communicate with a brand-new person who shares a great deal of her interests instead of trying to discuss anything with Dan, her long-term unemployed, depressed husband of over 23 years.

So far so good.

As a protagonist, Laura is an irritating, insufferable human being–nothing wrong with reading about insufferable people, of course, as they can be a lot of fun (thinking Kingsley Amis here), but when they’re supposed to garner our sympathy and our subsequent interest in the character’s journey of self-discovery, it helps if that character is sympathetic, and if this transaction doesn’t occur, then something different happens.  The alarm bells initially went off for me with Laura’s character early in the novel when she described her competency at diagnosing cancers, and the alarms were loud and clear when she reveals the “shock” and “hurt” she feels after discovering that her now-deceased mother had an ectopic pregnancy years earlier. And this sums up in a nutshell Laura’s central issue as a character for this reader.; other people’s death sentences are her tragedy; her mother’s inability to have more children is somehow a personal betrayal. Laura is self-focused and egotistical even while she’s presented as suffering from a general lack of affection from an obtuse, depressive, dull and uninspiring spouse. Listening to Laura became a bit like listening to a work acquaintance complaining about her home life even as you, the audience, silently feel a bit sorry for the poor sod at home.

Laura is a RT but has long-buried dreams of being a doctor with long slow hints of why that didn’t happen. The first person narrative goes back and forth in time, and Laura’s story of just what went wrong with those dreams is gradually revealed. She ‘settled’ for Dan, and it seems that there’s no intellectual spark between them. No matter. When she meets Richard, the sparks fly in an egoistical word-play exchange. I’m not sure that people really talk like this, and if I’m wrong and then they do, they are obnoxious. Here’s Laura and Richard discovering their mutual love of synonyms

“He initially had a business partner–Jack Jones. A fellow Marine. Unlike my father, Jack actually liked people. Don’t know what he was doing in business with my father, as Jack was a genuinely happy-go-lucky guy and Dad was kind of dyspeptic about life.”

“I like that word: dyspeptic.”

” ‘Bilious’ would also be a good descriptive word as well. ‘Liverish’ might also fit the bill.”

“How about ‘disputative’?”

“A little too legal, I think. Dad was a misanthrope, but never litigious.”

I looked at him with a new interest. “You like words,” I said.

“You’re looking at the Kennebac County Spelling Bee champion of 1974, which is kind of Middle Ages now, right? But once you get hooked on words you don’t really ever lose the habit.”

This sort of thing goes on for a while–a sort of word-one-upmanship, and the mental/sexual sparks flying through the air which each new posturing.

“Okay, I give you that. How about ‘abrogatory’?”

“Now you’re getting too fancy. ‘Approbative.’ “

“That’s not fancy? Sounds downright florid to me.”

“Florid isn’t ‘aureate.’  “

“Or ‘Churrigueresque’? he asked.

Five Days certainly has its merits; it is a page turner and at its best when conveying the unreality of an affair when compared to the ever-present tensions of home and responsibility. Life can throw a lot of unexpected disasters at anyone, but two middle-aged people discussing their disappointments, loneliness, unfulfilled dreams of literary fame, and past glory of long-gone college days has never been exactly an up experience. Here it’s an angst-filled odyssey into some depressing territory. I’ve been meaning to read a Douglas Kennedy novel for some time as I have seen a few films based on his books: The Woman on the Fifth (disliked it), Welcome to Woop Woop (one of my favourite cult films), The Big Picture (excellent). Perhaps Five Days was the wrong place to start, and I may very well be the wrong reader for the book as my sob-o-meter isn’t exactly a sensitive instrument. So, if any Kennedy readers out there would like to recommend one of his titles, I’ll give it a go.

Reunion at Red Paint Bay by George Harrar

“You don’t erase yourself at every stage of life. Human personalities develop in layers, one on top of the other. Scratch one layer, you can see what’s below.”

In George Harrar’s novel, Reunion at Red Paint Bay, when Simon Howe, owner and editor  of the only newspaper in the small town of Red Paint, Maine begins receiving anonymous postcards that bear cryptic messages, he doesn’t take it too seriously. At first he thinks the postcards might be a mistake, but then as the cards continue to arrive, Simon’s therapist wife, Amy senses danger while Simon is merely amused.  He can’t imagine that he’s “somehow fallen into a cliché mystery novel.” After all nothing ever happens in Red Paint, a small picturesque town, 4 miles by 3 miles with a population at just over 7,000 people–a place that calls itself “the friendliest town in Maine.” Everyone seems to know one another, and this is the sort of town where people don’t worry about locking their front doors. The last murder took place twenty years before, and there are times when Simon finds it difficult to drum up enough newsworthy stories to fill the paper. This is a town where stories about someone losing a toe and a sighting of the Virgin Mary in a pile of sand make the front page.

As the cards continue to arrive, it becomes increasingly obvious that the sender has an agenda which involves Simon. Amy, who works with the female survivors of rape, theorizes that whoever is sending the cards is out for revenge. The repetitive nature of the cards appears to have a payoff for the sender:

Revenge is often elaborate. That’s part of its appeal. You get to enjoy it over and over again as you plan it.

At first Simon can’t imagine himself as the object of revenge, but over time, he mentally lists all those who he may have offended over the years, and to his surprise, they are quite a few candidates who might wish him harm. As Simon and Amy feel a growing threat, we see fragmented glimpses of the man who has sent the postcards. He becomes bolder and bolder as he circles Simon, awaiting the perfect moment. Meanwhile as all of this goes on, the town readies itself for a 25 year high school reunion….

Reunion at Red Paint places us immediately in the lives of Simon and Amy Howe. These are people who’ve chosen small town life for a reason, and Red Paint is Simon’s hometown, a place he’s returned to even though he may have given up the chances of a better career. Simon is a wonderful husband and father, but is he all that he seems to be? Shortly after the novel opens, there’s a marvellous scene as husband and wife order a meal for their son at the drive-in window at Burger World. This seemingly simple scene sets the stage to show a division–a divide of communication and true thought processes, for while Amy chides her husband for not being friendly enough with the waitress, Simon has a sneaking desire to go check out the face and the body behind the attractive voice. This scene sets up the novel’s underlying theme: how well do we really know anyone?

Although the novel may appear to be a stalker thriller, and it certainly starts as that, this is not an adequate description. Yes, there are moments of gripping intensity, but in the final analysis, the novel turns in a much more thoughtful, psychological direction and morphs into something unexpected and even creepier as we are faced with some big questions about guilt, remorse and atonement. While the meshing of these two elements: thriller and drama are not always successful, nonetheless, the story generates a lot of issues for discussion regarding the chilling ability to create stories and versions of our lives that in the telling become more acceptable and fit the version of the person we’d like to be. I’d recommend this novel to people who enjoy the novels of Ruth Rendell.

Review copy.