Madwoman in the Attic

Think of England 'Til It's Over: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig

Like most people, I'm not always looking for the latest literary masterpiece to peruse with furrowed brow and analyze extensively afterward regarding its thesis on the socio-political ramifications of society's post-colonial paradigm of blah blah blah. Admittedly, I love depth and substance with my choice of reading material, but sometimes--particularly during a crazy week, like the past one--I just want the novelistic equivalent to a warm bath: something I can sink into and simply enjoy with minimum effort.

So it's not as if I was ever expecting Lauren Willig's debut novel to offer profound literary  insights. If at any point I had, the book's jacket would have rapidly dispelled such misguided notions, featuring as it does a girl in a billowy pink dress (adorned with pink roses), with blurbs in a bubble-gum pink font on the back cover. Pink is, in fact, a pervasive theme of the book's jacket, which probably should have tipped me off as to the book's actual contents. Key words like "romance" and "chick-lit" were also--in retrospect--legitimate red flags. In my defense, however, it is a novel about the "Pink Carnation," Willig's 21st century answer to Baroness Orczy's immortal Scarlet Pimpernel, so I rationalized that pink was a logical choice for the cover artist rather than a sign of insipid girliness.

Here is what I was expecting from a book that claimed to continue the mythology of The Scarlet Pimpernel, a spy thriller set in Europe during the French Revolution: intrigue, suspense, and clever espionage. Artful foiling of an equally clever villain was not strictly necessary but still desirable. Additionally, the author's prominent status as a Harvard historian seemed an assurance that the historical setting would be believable, perhaps even--fingers crossed--vivid and atmospheric. But believable, certainly, because...well, it's Harvard, for heaven's sake.

In the universe of Pink Carnation, the Scarlet Pimpernel is an actual historical figure who was followed upon retirement by the Purple Gentian and the Pink Carnation--the identity of the latter having remained a mystery up to the present day. Enter Eloise Kelly, a Harvard graduate student in history (ahem) who has traveled to London to discover the identity of the Pink Carnation as fodder for her thesis.  She soon discovers journals from the nineteenth century, and from that point on, the story veers between the present day in the life of Eloise Kelly and the Purple Gentian in nineteenth century France.

Honestly, a combination of (early) nineteenth century Europe, espionage and academia seemed like the ultimate recipe for entertainment as far as I was concerned. I read the first chapters--written in a breezy, humorous style--with a cozy sense of impending gratification, the way one anticipates the taste of a chocolate bar during the moment of unwrapping it.

Unfortunately, the wrapper turned out to be empty. There is no intrigue here, no real espionage, and there is certainly no suspense. More unforgivable than any of these things, however, is that for all that the hero and the heroine profess to be experts in all the classics (in the original Greek and Latin!) there is nary a glimmer of intelligence in this book.

Where to begin? It's really quite simple: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation has nothing in common with Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel and everything in common with any random Harlequin romance that might fall off the shelf. Worse yet, we get two of the same agonizingly hackneyed plot for the price of one: while Eloise meets a tall, handsome, clever man whom she "hates," our nineteenth century heroine, Amy, has exactly the same experience. One of these plotlines would have been so much more than enough--but two? In two different time periods? What on earth is the point?

But really, to dwell on that at all is to disregard the other elements that are so much worse. For one thing, the characters, who comprise a Harvard historian, a multilingual ingenue, and a brilliant spy, are always a step behind the reader. Amy is supposed to be clever but misses the obvious clues to the Purple Gentian's identity; Richard (the Purple Gentian) is supposed to be the most skilled spy in England, yet leaves his house through the front door in his disguise. Moreover, his whole family knows his identity, which seems rather pointless. As for Eloise--she figures out the identity of the Pink Carnation about two hundred pages after the average reader, and she is supposed to be brilliant. Watching these characters stumble through their idiocy until the "revelation" of the truth finally dawns on them is about as enjoyable as chewing nails.

And yet...even all that is still not getting to the real issue, which is that there is no real plot. Sure, there are contrivances, and these all with one purpose: to put the characters in situations where they will fall in love and then--not much later on--make out. Constantly. If they're not doing it, they're thinking about it, and that's all they're thinking about--not the monarchy, not espionage, nothing but what is in their frilly nineteenth century pants. The sense I get from this novel is that it was set in the nineteenth century for no other reason than to stage a romance in period clothes, especially gowns that reveal heaving bosoms. Amy is a 21st century girl in Regency garb, engaging in premarital petting and sex without a second thought. Even the tiniest bit of internal conflict would have contributed to the character's believability, and there is none whatsoever.

So this is really a romance novel and nothing more, with the premise of espionage only existing in order to facilitate titillating encounters between a masked man and a girl who--even after several intense makeout sessions--fails in her stupidity to guess who he is. And since the aforesaid sessions are described very explicitly, and are the centerpieces of whatever plot there is,  the book feels like some kind of swashbuckle-porn. I don't want to be cliched and call this book a "bodice-ripper," except...one of the makeout sessions actually is preceded (and precipitated) by the heroine's bodice getting ripped, so what can I do?

The quality of the writing during the many "romantic" moments is a disaster that truly dazzles in its awfulness. Take this, for example, as an appetizer: "His tangy cologne filled her nostrils, blotting out the scents of the garden, assaulting her with memory, weakening her with desire." Oh dear. Or better yet, this: "She cried out in her pleasure as a thousand diamond sparkles exploded across the back of her eyes and bathed her body in effervescent splendor."

Diamond sparkles. Diamond sparkles. Seriously, need I say more?

You might think that those are isolated examples, but they are actually only two of a vast array of turgid, florid, dreadful descriptions. The little espionage actually featured in this book--with one of the highlights being when Amy simply traipses into Napolean's conveniently empty study and riffles through his papers--only serves to link the endless pornographic sighing together into the semblance of a coherent shape. The heroine thinks of nothing but the strong, strong arms of that nasty man she "hates," the hero thinks of nothing but Amy's bouncing breasts, or behind, or whichever, and Eloise tells herself (repeatedly) that she has absolutely zero interest in that nasty, nasty, handsome man.

I'm sure a lot of people will tell me that it's just a "fun" book, but I guess that depends how you define "fun." To me, fun is suspense,  intrigue, and characters I can care about; if I thought this sort of thing were "fun," I'd have hundreds of Harlequin romances to read and this would be a very different sort of blog. And as a last stroke of hilarity--this book actually comes with a Reader's Guide. You know, those questions at the end that are supposed to help you analyze and understand what you just read. How was I to know that this was a ridiculous, shallow book when it's dressed up to look like so much more? What I want to know is who actually needed the Reader's Guide!

For fun, mindless historical romance read Judith Merkle Riley instead, who with all her faults still makes an effort to camouflage the romances with coherent plots. Stay away from this unless you're looking for unadulterated, improbable, badly-written romance.

Harry Potter and the Unpopular Opinion

All the recent hoopla about the upcoming--and final--Harry Potter novel  reminded me of some thoughts I've had on the series up until this point. I don't know of anyone who feels the way I do about the recent developments in the series. For one thing, most people seem to venerate the third book, The Prisoner of Azkaban, and despise the fifth, The Order of the Phoenix.  Now I do agree that Azkaban was technically the best-crafted of the books, and it achieved a depth that the previous two offerings, in spite of their entertainment value, had essentially lacked. The plot is  tight and skilfully layered, particularly in the segment that plays with time; and in many ways it's a plot with a level of craft that Rowling doesn't repeat again in subsequent efforts. The Goblet of Fire is a sprawling affair with an extraneous 100 pages of exposition; and The Half-Blood Prince just drags and drags.

None of this is particularly controversial, as there seem to be plenty of readers who would agree with it. Where I seem to have diverged from popular opinion is in my view that the fifth book, The Order of the Phoenix, was in some ways the best. Conversely, this only intensified my disappointment when The Half-Blood Prince pulled the rug out from under me, but I'll get to that in a moment.

Why did I like The Order of the Phoenix so much? Until then, the series had the flavor of the most typical fantasy: a noble hero from noble (and dead) parents, a budding romance with a pretty nonentity, and a vendetta against a sadistic foe (in this case, Snape). And what the author did in Phoenix was methodically turn the tables on these assumptions. The romance with Cho-Chang is revealed for the shallow attraction that it is and peters out. Harry has an unsettling affiliation with Voldemort that is revealed in his ability to speak and understand parseltongue. And my favorite--the development that I thought was simply brilliant--was the revelation that Harry's father, rather than being the perfect martyr we had heard about for so long, had actually ruthlessly tormented Snape, for no other reason than sheer dislike. The act that Harry witnesses when he learns this piece of information is difficult to read about in its careless cruelty, and establishes the boy James Potter as someone who didn't scruple to gang up on another kid with the help of his friends.

There are few cliches more longstanding than that of the hero with the noble, dead father; and that cliche had been reinforced throughout the series with constant references to James Potter that were suffused with a childlike reverence. In Dune, Frank Herbert writes that the moment a child realizes that his father is a human being is the moment that he starts to grow up; Harry, having never known his father, seemed at risk for never reaching this crucial stage of development. With the subversion of the Noble Father Cliche, Rowling forces Harry into maturity and directs the plot to more nuanced ground than it had previously covered. I'd argue that while the barrage of traumas that Harry had already experienced would have had to mature him in some way, nothing was as maturing an experience for Harry as being forced to come to terms with the idea that his father was far from perfect...and that Snape, a man he hated, might have a point after all.

All of this excited me because I felt that the series was entering a new level of complexity. Harry had ties with Voldemort, his father was not the man he had believed, and Harry's worst enemy in the school was a man who had been unjustly abused by Harry's father. I awaited The Half-Blood Prince with the conviction that Rowling was set to turn the tables on our expectations, and lead her hero into darker waters than the first book would ever have hinted at.

Unfortunately for me, I was wrong. While there are many entertaining plot elements in The Half-Blood Prince, subversion of cliches is definitely not one of them. I'm not going to get into a review of the book here, even though there's a lot to say and many problems to cover. What disappointed me most--more than the relative insignificance of the titular Half-Blood Prince--was the depiction of Voldemort in the flashbacks that Dumbledore reveals to Harry at various points throughout the book. What an opportunity Rowling had here, to explore the connection between Harry and Voldemort and explore the reasons for Voldemort becoming what he ultimately becomes. And that opportunity is wasted, because we learn two things from the flashbacks: 1) Voldemort was evil from the beginning and 2) Harry is different from Voldemort because he is a good kid who doesn't hunger for power to the same extent as Voldemort and wants to do the right thing.

To me this opened up a question: why create a seeming connection between Harry and Voldemort, and hint that Harry has the potential to become like Voldemort, and then depict Voldemort as being evil from the start? Wouldn't it have been so much more powerful to show that Voldemort was once a basically good kid, like Harry, who went terribly wrong? As it is, whatever connection that had been established between Harry and Voldemort is no longer relevant--except for magical purposes--because there is nothing interesting to be learned from it. Harry will never be anything like Voldemort, because he is good and Voldemort is bad. Therefore all the psychological tension that seemed to be there evaporated instantly, and Voldemort is immediately rendered a far less interesting villain.

Lust for power as a drive to do evil is timeless, but on its own and without complexities, it is the stuff of kids' cartoons and nothing more. Even Sauron, Tolkien's unremittingly evil Dark Lord, was not evil in origin, as Elrond says, "Nothing is evil in the beginning." Evil itself, as a concept, is simplistic and boring; it's getting there--the gradual missteps that lead to larger missteps on a dark journey--that make the best fantasy interesting. Read The Black Cauldron and cry for Elidyr, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

To a lesser degree, I was also disappointed with the romance angle in The Half-Blood Prince. I had thought that by revealing the Cho-Chang flirtation to be shallow, Rowling was leading into a more mature view of relationships. Instead, we get a slapdash, tedious romance with Ginny, of which we learn nothing other than that she and Harry are sucking face all over the damn place. It's dull, it makes the character dull, and we've seen it a hundred times. If it has any purpose at all, it is, perhaps, for the melodramatic ending that Rowling may as well have stolen from the ending of the first Spiderman movie. But at least in Spiderman, the relationship has been developed to the point where the ending is genuinely sad; in Half-Blood Prince, all we know about Harry and Ginny's relationship is that they kiss a lot, so who cares?

So I guess all this is my way of saying that yes, the majority of readers are right and I was wrong about The Order of the Phoenix. I had mistaken it for a portal into complexity and adulthood when apparently, it was not intended to be either of those things. And that is disappointing to me, but at least I'll be approaching The Deathly Hallows in the right frame of mind. It's entertainment, folks--no more, no less.

In Defense of Pan's Labyrinth

I didn't want to comment on this magnificent film until I'd seen it again, because its richness is such that I doubt it is possible to do it justice after only one viewing. Even now, I'd like to point out that this not meant to be an exhaustive review, that it is more of a response to comments made by many sources--in the media and otherwise--about this movie. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that so many people seemingly did not "get" this movie in any way. However, to me the comments that I have read are indicative of a larger problem: that the American public as a whole--which includes  lovers of fantasy--has no understanding of the potential significance of fantasy. For every Susanna Clarke, there are ten equivalents to Eragon. For every million fans of fantasy, there are only about ten who seem able to articulate a purpose to fantasy that transcends mere escapism. And never has this been so clear to me than after reading the popular reaction to what is possibly the greatest fantasy film ever made, Pan's Labyrinth.

The prevailing opinion of Pan's Labyrinth seems to be that it is about a girl who escapes into fantasy because the world around her is falling apart. The fantasy, therefore, is described in these reviews as a haven from the cruelties of her adopted father. One reviewer even extols the ending (which I will not spoil here) as a message of brightness and hope in the face of adversity.

   Well, yes and no. Ofelia most certainly wants to escape, and there is no doubt that her initial motivation in reading fairy tales is exactly that. But as the story unfolds, we quickly learn that the realm of fantasy into which Ofelia has entered is no Brian Froudesque wonderland. There are no sparkly fairies, no kind old wise men, no shining gold talismans that avert the dark. Everything about Ofelia's fantasy world is either subtly or overtly disturbing, from a fairy that looks more like a giant woodland insect, to a volatile, even cruel faun, to an eyeless monster that is brilliantly, stunningly horrific.  Even the mandrake root that Ofelia obtains in the course of the story is vaguely disturbing, described as a plant that "dreams of becoming human" (just one sample of the beautiful writing).  Yes, you heard me. Del Toro managed to make a plant disturbing.

So I ask you: if you were going to escape, would you really choose to go to a place that resembles one of your more unsettling dreams? Or would you rather, quite sensibly, go with Brian Froud?

Bruno Bettelheim was famous for his psychological approach to fairy tales, claiming that children read fairy tales in order to make sense--a symbolic sense--of the world around them. While Bettelheim's ideas are grounded in Freudian psychology and are therefore limited to a degree by the restrictions of those theories, his main idea still stands and is clearly apparent in Pan's Labyrinth. I would posit that the reason the fantasy sequences are so seamlessly interspersed with the  real-life sequences is for precisely that reason: to blur the boundaries between them, to portray them both--reality and fantasy--as being inextricably connected with one another. Ofelia's fantasy world is not her escape--it is her life, at its most symbolic essence. The horrors she faces in her fantasy world are mirrored in the real world, and one could even posit that the atmosphere of torture and blood that pervades the lair of the underground monster is something she has sensed in the house of the Captain, without quite understanding what it was. The tasks that Ofelia must complete in order to become a princess, chosen and special, mirror her real-life struggle from childhood to maturity in a world where childhood innocence has been torn to shreds.

The plot thread involving her baby brother--something that can't be described in too much detail without spoiling the film--is probably the most concrete example of this idea: most children in Ofelia's position would have been tempted to blame much of what has happened to her on her mother's ill-fated pregnancy. It was after all that pregnancy that led Ofelia and her mother to enter the world of the Captain in the first place. The baby's connection to the Captain--which he reinforces with constant references to the importance of "[his] son"--only increases what must surely be some form of conflict in Ofelia's heart, a natural antagonism that she is not even consciously aware of. This antagonism is instead submerged in her fantasy world, and her final test is a reflection of how strong she can manage to be vis-a-vis her own deep-seated desires. In the end, much of fantasy is about an exploration of the self, traveling to the inner depths, and Pan's Labyrinth is no exception.

Now I don't purport to "get " this film, really--it is incredibly complex and a variety of interpretations are to be expected, even desirable: this isn't allegory. But to interpret the entire purpose of the fantasy element in the film as "escape" is to reduce the film to a single dimension of storytelling, even thinner than allegory. Something that was made to entertain for a season and then vanish, as such a film would deserve to do. I offer my own interpretation humbly, aware that I am engaging with something that might be beyond me for the moment. I only ask that others do what I have been trying to do, which is to look deeper. You will be rewarded, I promise.

No Small Achievement: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Back when I was an undergraduate, I remember walking with another literature student after class and discussing James Joyce. I don't remember why, because at the time--as well as now--I had no firm opinion of James Joyce, having heard enough about Ulysses to suspect that it wouldn't exactly be a thrill ride. In any case, my companion had a good deal to say and waxed eloquent, at last declaring that the Novel is Dead (it was in capitals, trust me).

I can sort of see the point to this:  so many novels are purely plot-driven, and it's reasonable then to wonder what the difference is, really, between the story as a book and the story as it would have appeared in a film. Bestselling novels are often written like screenplays, with line after line of dialogue and very little internal rumination on the part of the characters. It would be easy to make them into movies, and it's therefore understandable that  some might believe that the Novel, in all its unnecessary reliance on mere words to convey a story, has finally breathed its last.

And then along comes Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things,  in which the language of the novel is not only a tool for storytelling. It can't even be described merely as artistry. Both are valuable in themselves, and necessary in literature; but in this novel, Roy travels beyond even those respectable goals and to a farther shore. The God of Small Things is one of those rare novels that prove beyond any doubt that not only is the Novel alive--it is dancing.

Rather than simply using the English language as a tool to tell a story, Roy reshapes it into a world. It's a world that contains its own rhythms, its own internal meanings. Some part of this is due to its being conveyed, for the most part, through the eyes of children; they are formulating their newborn sense of the world through language, and so we see language being reinvented to dovetail with their perceptions. And as a side note--though it ends up being very important to the overall quality of the work--Roy excels at writing the viewpoint of children. They are presented to the reader without sentimentality, without any overt begging for our affection; yet it's not long before their heartbreaking vulnerability becomes heartbreak for the reader.  Innocence and vulnerability are presented through images: a "fountain" of dark hair in a "Love-in-Tokyo" (two beads on a rubber band); an "Elvis puff" of hair and "beige pointy shoes." These images are repeated at crucial moments to accentuate the smallness and fragility of these characters, whose identities are yet so bound with such fragile things. This is one example, among many examples that could be given, of Roy's creation of a small universe through language alone.

The story itself is, on its surface, about the clash of social classes and forbidden love--a story that can date back to as far as the concept of social class existed. India is an "exotic" setting for many of the readers of this book, but the story is so primal and basic that the setting is an enhancement rather than the point. And herein lies the paradox: that The God of Small Things is a very old story, yet told in such a way that it feels utterly new and alive.  Roy may as well have been writing about her own book when she writes:

"The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. ...You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you don't. In  The Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again.
That is their mystery and their magic."

Working under the assumption that we know what will happen, Roy doesn't limit herself to Aristotle's prescribed Beginning, Middle and End in order to tell the story. Instead she starts from the end and works her way backwards and forwards, almost in circular fashion, darting between different moments regardless of chronology the way an artist swirls the paintbrush in all areas of the canvas at all times. And like an artist, she ties it all together--with themes and details rather than with color and line--so that there is unity, so that the text never feels disjointed. It is a tale that is constructed of intensely fine detail, of moments as delicately luminous as an insect's wing. And uniting it all in particular is the language, the reinvented phrases that gather in meaning until they come to embody entire themes.

There are many artists--writers, filmmakers--who attempt to tell stories out of order. What was trendy in Memento is now a commonplace technique, that many utilize purely for the suspense value. My praise is therefore not specifically for the technique, but for the expert hand with which the author wields it here, working as she does with such delicacy and attention to detail. The last chapter, in particular, is pure brilliance: I won't give it away, but I'll only say that it takes place at a pivotal moment in the story and is by no means the ending. We read it after we have already experienced, in full and visceral horror, the way events ultimately play out; and arriving at the last chapter with that knowledge is the perfect, and perfectly wrenching, coda to the novel.

On another tack, so many artists with strong political views--and to say that about Roy would be an understatement--use art in order to harangue their audience into agreement. In contrast, Roy refrains from indulging in polemic; with the exception of a few choice phrases about the shallowness of tourists, she keeps the novel focused on the human element, without pleas and without self-righteousness.  There is a subtle bias against the West, especially as portrayed by Chacko, a Rhodes Scholar and Anglophile who views himself as politically enlightened, yet uses the system of oppression against his own sister and her children. On the other hand, Roy is ruthless about the problems she sees in India, as well, so there is no one target, and on a whole the picture that emerges is nuanced and complicated. The God of Small Things is above all a story about people, and its use of one of literature's most universal themes--forbidden love amid social oppression--causes it transcend the boundaries of time and place. We are not meant to pick out who the villains are on the world stage; rather we are directed to notice the ongoing tragedy of tyrannical ideologies that are "constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature."

The story is about people, rather than the epic sweep of political events; yet in the end, the story feels epic all the same, because it is universal. The God of Small Things concerns a tragedy that is infinitesimal in its circumference, involving only one family and one innocent bystander. The characters are relentlessly ordinary, and the only character that can be construed as a villain--Baby Kochamma--is the smallest and pettiest of them all. As a result, the tiny, intimate details throughout the novel are hugely important. This is a novel that both celebrates and laments the insignificance of each human being on the tide of world events; the tragedy that so many people are cut down by greater forces, and at the same time, the potential beauty in the small, seemingly simple things that can imbue each human life with ephemeral meaning.  A paradox that is perhaps encapsulated at the end of the book, which depicts people experiencing beauty and at the same time, the acute awareness that it is far too fragile to last. A huge, world-encompassing idea telescoped into tiny moments, a small story. And a tremendous book.

 

Woe Betide Me: Paint it Black by Janet Fitch

Until the release of this book, Janet Fitch had been something of a conundrum for me. I enjoyed White Oleander and was impressed with several aspects of it; yet to me, some indefinable element prevented its making the jump from skilled writing to bona fide, Great American Novel-style literature. At the time—and after a reread, because I did enjoy the book—I could not have articulated what that element was.

But now with the advent of her latest novel, Paint it Black, the lacunae in Fitch's style have emerged into the light. While still enwrapped in Fitch's trademark lyricism and poetic imagery, Paint it Black allows more weaknesses to show through the polished surface.

It's only coincidence—and perhaps unfair coincidence, at that—that I read The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett right after reading this book, not knowing that it, too, is a story of lost love. The contrast was almost painful. While Patchett uses simple, restrained sentences to convey heartbreak, Fitch makes her character scream. And not just metaphorically. When Josie arrives to view her boyfriend's body in the morgue, her thoughts run as follows: "His body, goddamn him. HIS BODY!"

Now I know that this is a realistic reaction, and in fact all the grieving as it is portrayed in Paint it Black is realistic. But there is a difference between realistic and artistically effective, and I'd argue that to make the next 387 pages a Greek tragedy of shrieks and moans has little effect on the reader's emotions. This is especially true in the beginning of the novel, when we don't even know what Michael was like; we find out he's dead before he's even appeared as a character. Later on, we know what he was like, but at that point I was simply weary of Josie's obsession with him. And again: her reactions are realistic, her grief is by no measure too much; yet an author has to make certain choices in every depiction, thinking toward what will have the strongest impact, and creating as much with omission—with what isn't said—as with the actual words on the page.

 And it's hard, there's no question about that: writing an entire novel about a loss is an extremely challenging task to take on. There are different ways to approach it, and to me, an endless litany of bitterness and agony has the paradoxical effect of detaching the reader from the sensations of grief. And because this litany comprises the entirety of the novel, by the end the sensation I was feeling was not sadness, but claustrophobia. There is so little air to breathe in Josie's form-fitting closet of bereavement, and while that might be true of grief, to stretch that kind of one-note portrayal into a novel is a bit much. A novella might have been perfect; as it is, it feels like an idea that has to be repeated often enough to fill enough pages.

 Fitch's language is compelling when it is not too overwrought, her descriptions of 1980's Los Angeles a delight to read, so it's only halfway through the novel that I started to notice that there was very little plot. The only real plot element, Josie's acrimonious and then oddly codependent relationship with Michael's mother, reaches a manufactured, clichéd denouement and then abruptly fizzles out. I won't give away the plot point, but I will say that the "secret" Josie discovers about Michael is hardly surprising and unworthy of the exhaustive buildup that precedes it.

The novel is seemingly structured with two goals in mind: to explore Josie's bereavement—which includes ruminations about Michael and his hidden past—and to evoke the glitter, hedonism and squalor of LA's punk scene in the 1980's. Those two streams, for the most part, seem to run separately—it never becomes clear why the author has chosen to set the novel during this period, or how it connects to the novel's overarching themes. I found the depiction of a period that I know nothing about to be interesting, but still wondered why it was juxtaposed with this particular story. Not a glaring flaw, simply a missing piece that might have added depth to a novel that ultimately feels a bit empty. The ending is a combination of saccharine and contrivance, wrapping up the novel without any real closure but giving Josie herself closure in the easiest, least complicated way possible. It cannot be called a climax, because in order to have a climax there must first be a plot.

  While I know I've been merciless here, I don't want to give the impression that I've dismissed Janet Fitch as a writer. Her prose is exceptional in its beauty and she has a flair for clever dialogue—two very strong points in her favor. Appropriately for a book set in the art world, many of the descriptions are very much like paintings in themselves, which is lovely. While I was dissatisfied with Paint it Black, I look forward to trying her next book.

 

Winter Grief: The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

There are few books that I have wanted to love as much as this one. After the exquisite Bel Canto, Ann Patchett could do no wrong in my eyes: I was ready to love anything she had produced. That is not to say that I was expecting a work without flaws, or on the level of Bel Canto--the like of which sometimes comes only once in an author's lifetime. It would be unfair to expect the same level of perfection. But I did arrive at The Magician's Assistant with a deep reverence for the author and the intent to appreciate whatever she had done.

It is that reverence which prevents me from panning this book outright. An author who has demonstrated so much thoughtfulness, so much insight and vision as Ann Patchett has, deserves a careful approach to her work, even if the instinctive reaction is a negative one. Therefore I've restrained myself from venting my frustrations with this novel and shall instead attempt to explore what it was, what it was meant to be, and what, in my opinion, ultimately went wrong.

There is much about The Magician's Assistant that is absolutely right: the prose itself is a harbinger of the sublime prose of Bel Canto, here much quieter and subdued but with many of the elements already in place. There are dreamy passages that evoke an atmosphere of sadness--the predominant atmosphere of this story about grief--without devolving into storms of tears. The effective simplicity with which Patchett evokes the experience of loss is in itself an astounding accomplishment; most authors in such an instance are tempted to run their characters off a metaphorical cliff in their despair. Instead, Patchett's language is restrained, and her dream sequences are sad even as they are surreal, and vaguely reminiscent of Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. This passage, for example, presents the tension between loss and ordinary living that pervades so much of the novel:

"For a minute Sabine wonders if she and Phan look like lovers, the way they are pressed together on the bridge, but then she remembers that he is dead and she is asleep in America."

Tenderness and unbearable spaces evoked quietly, in one sentence. The dream sequences of Sabine's lost love are written in the present tense--in contrast to the rest of the novel--the better to imbue them with the feeling of a different dimension of existence altogether. Distant but real, in a way more real than what is happening in Sabine's life.

And that, I think, is where the novel loses its balance. For a long time, as I was reading, I was unable to pinpoint the reason for my discontent with the novel as a whole. It was only halfway through that the reason became clear to me: when The Magician's Assistant opens, the real story has already happened. In the past, Sabine, a beautiful, affluent, educated woman, fell in love with Parsifal, a gay man, and chose to commit her life to him--and ultimately, to his lover--rather than find a man who will love her back. He dies on the novel's first page.

The reader might think, upon beginning the book, that the story will focus on this intense and unusual relationship, but instead, Sabine discovers that Parsifal had a mother and sisters living in Nebraska. Sabine and Parsifal had been living in Los Angeles, which is in this novel presented as a paradise (an image with which its less affluent residents might disagree). This sets up a contrast between liberal, warm Los Angeles and cold, stifled Nebraska, and the latter soon becomes the backdrop to the novel as Sabine journeys there in order to better understand Parsifal as he really was.

The problems with this novel are deep-rooted and therefore not readily apparent, but a major one is that this story actually consists of two unrelated stories struggling against one another, and it's the less interesting story that ultimately wins. We are given no insight into why a woman with every opportunity--in love and otherwise--would marry a man who will never reciprocate her desire, and whose lover lives in the same house. In real life, such a woman would probably be psychologically unhealthy, regardless of the circumstances. Yet Sabine is as perfect as she is beautiful, and whatever complexity that may have passed between her and Parsifal is obscured by the mainline plot, which consists of smalltown cliches--like, for example, an abusive husband and a long-suffering mother--and more importantly, does not seem to be in any way related to the novel's unusual premise.

It would have made more sense either to make the premise less bizarre, or to focus on the premise exclusively and develop it. What inner drives, what motivation led Sabine to stay with Parsifal for thirty years? That, to me, is a much more interesting question than anything that concerns the Nebraska relatives. The result is that the flimsy Nebraska plot is weighted down by the complexity of the backstory, and because those complexities are never addressed, it feels like two different novels, awkwardly blended. Either story might have been compelling on its own, but together, the result is that neither is explored quite enough.

There's a hint that Sabine is not quite as well-adjusted as she seems, and that's in her relationship with Parsifal's sister, Kitty. Sabine sees Kitty as Parsifal from the beginning, projecting everything she loved about him onto his sister. The sexual tension is obvious throughout, and Kitty herself is doing the same thing as Sabine, only in reverse: she sees Sabine as Parsifal. The two of them share a sexual attraction based on the idea that each sees the other as Parsifal, and considering that he was the unattainable lover for Sabine, and a sibling to Kitty, there is an underlying element of dysfunction to the entire relationship.

Yet Patchett, even while portraying the relationship in this manner, does not seem to view it as dysfunctional at all. My biggest criticism of the novel is that it seems to show a lack of awareness on the part of the author, or a lack of willingness to address  complexities that the author herself has raised. She introduces potentially twisted relationships and presents them with innocence and naivete. Such an approach has the potential to change our view of certain types of relationships, or perhaps to make normal what the average reader would see at first glance as abnormal; but in this particular case, the result, in my view, is that the author comes across as slightly naive and unaware of the darker implications of what she is depicting.

Magic in the novel seems to represent the ability to transcend the confines of one's birth and assume a new identity--particularly when that identity has been formed in rural America. In that sense, perhaps, The Magician's Assistant is a take on the American Dream: we are all free to reinvent ourselves, to sever our bonds with the past if necessary. But while the magic floats throughout the novel as a metaphor, we miss out on a true sense of wonder, the like of which has been evoked in the past by Michael Chabon in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. References to the magic also underscore how much we are missing by not focusing on Sabine and Parsifal's story rather than the Nebraska story: they traveled the world, performed in dimlit LA bars and even on TV, and yet we are supposed to skip over all of this and be interested in Nebraska. I admit, I find it hard to understand.