We Interrupt Our Programming on Dark Academia to Bring You . . . Two Families

Wordplay has published a number of book reviews recently, but it turns out that a week sometimes isn’t long enough for me to finish a book. This could lead you to believe that Wordplay is just a lazy bum who doesn’t care about disappointing its readers. This isn’t true, and that includes all six of you! To make it up to you, this week I have two books to share, both of which, as it turns out, deal with the subject of grief and loss in a family context. I didn’t know that’s what I was getting when I started reading them; it was probably NoveList that put both of these books on my reading list when I decided to take a break from Dark Academia for a little while.

Sue Miller’s Monogamy (2020) is a story of a happy marriage that ends in grief with the death of the husband. Graham and Annie have been married for decades when Graham’s unexpected death leaves Annie devastated. She slowly recovers from her loss with the support of a large circle of family and friends; it’s months before she suddenly realizes that Graham had been having an affair with a woman of their acquaintance just before he died, a realization that turns sorrow into rage. What had been a deep but fairly uncomplicated grief is transformed into a second loss as Annie struggles with feelings of betrayal.

The background to all of this is that both Graham and Annie had been shaped by the sexual revolution of the ’60s and ’70s and had each enjoyed casual sex. Graham’s first marriage was an open one in which he thrived but his wife did not. Graham had had another brief affair early in his marriage to Annie, and Annie had had a brief adventure of her own with another man while already married to Graham. Thus the use of the word “monogamy” is a bit relative as applied to their marriage: it was mostly monogamous. 

Annie and Graham move in sophisticated Cambridge circles; dinner parties, art shows, and author readings are part and parcel of their world. Theirs is the East Coast intellectual version of what I think of as the “Santa Barbara” lifestyle, ruled by Aphrodite, the goddess of gourmet sensibilities, wine, good food, and sexual love. Graham is a bit of a Dionysus character, with a large frame as well as large appetites—always the life of the party, generous, gregarious, and loving—which is exactly what draws Annie to him in the first place. Her only reservation is a fear of being “swallowed up” by his larger-than-lifeness. Her character is cooler than his, as she tends to observe and record life. Both of them are “nice” people, but they are in some ways opposites. I suppose the main question the novel raised for me is, can you live in a world of Epicurean appetite and not be tempted to indulge those appetites in more than one direction? Another question would be, is monogamy possible for a Dionysian personality whose very lust for life is what’s so attractive about him to begin with?

Probably, I am reading this novel wrong. I found the story compelling, but perhaps there is some working-class snobbery in me that made me a little less sympathetic than I was supposed to be to Annie’s predicament. Annie and Graham had an idyllic life together, an existence of relative ease and comfort, fueled by doses of hedonism. They are interesting people, but perhaps a bit self-absorbed, taking all of the wonderful things in their lives as simply their due. It didn’t seem surprising to me that monogamy wasn’t quite possible for them.

On the other hand, I was unexpectedly blown away by Alison Espach’s Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, a 2022 novel about a family trying to hold themselves together after the death of one of their daughters in a tragic accident. The story is told from the point of view of the younger daughter, “ugly duckling” Sally, who idolizes her older sister Kathy even as she suffers in her shadow. Both girls are fascinated by the athletic and charismatic Billy Barnes, who becomes Kathy’s boyfriend while Sally lives out her crush vicariously. The Holts are a typical American family with a comfortable but not luxurious Connecticut life that’s turned upside down by Kathy’s death. What saves them is quite simply the fact that they stay together and tough it out.

One of the things I liked about this novel was the fact that it refused to sugarcoat the horror of the accident and its effects on the survivors but also maintained a sort of effervescent sense of humor on the part of the narrator. Events in the novel can be both terribly sad and funny at the same time, and they often are. There’s a messiness to the emotions in the novel and at the same time an honesty about them. Nothing is going to resolve what’s happened, and there’s no pretense that the family isn’t struggling, even years later. They’re almost destroyed by grief. 

Sally slowly comes into her own as she grows to adulthood but realizes that her life, successful as it seems from the outside, lacks authenticity. Sally’s mother tries to console herself with wine and regular visits to a psychic (who may actually know more than Sally gives her credit for); Sally’s father simply refuses to give up on his family even in the face of overwhelming pain and unforgiving anger. The needs of the family members clash at times, and they often fail to support one another, but they hang on.

It’s difficult to write about this novel without giving too much away; there is an emotional drive to the story that carries it forward. I admired Sally’s authenticity and humor, which persist in spite of a difficult adolescence and young adulthood. Although the financial circumstances of the Holts are probably not that different from those of Annie’s and Graham’s family, they seem worlds apart. The Holts seem more of a functioning family; you see how the tragedy affects all of them separately and all of them together. The novel is really a portrait of the family’s dynamics. In Monogamy, Annie and Graham seem more like ambitious people who just happened to have children; everything that happens with this family seems to happen to each of them individually, as if they never quite coalesced. It is a portrait of individuals.

Aside from that, there is an anarchic bedrock of truth in Sally’s narration that I found irresistible. In such an ordinary life, you would perhaps not expect to come across such extraordinary emotional courage, but there it is, right in the midst of high school Latin club, visits to the dentist, and dead trees that need to be removed lest they fall on the house. I actually gasped once or twice while reading this novel, a little in awe of how persistently it aimed straight at the heart of things.

Zeus, Hera, and Author's Intent

This week I read Mary Higgins Clark's recent book, As Time Goes By, which features a murder, a woman's search for her birth parents, illegal trafficking in prescription drugs, romance, sleuthing, and family drama. Ms. Clark's reputation as a writer of popular fiction is well established, and I'm sure some of my readers are more familiar with her than I am, but I was interested in certain domestic themes that appeared in her book. It may sound grandiose to suggest that they are mythic, but indeed, they are; works of popular fiction are often the place in which mythic themes first appear.

It's tricky to try to infer an author's intent. Even if they tell you their purpose, there may be ideas in their work that appear as if of their own volition: that's the way the unconscious works. By the time you untangle your interpretations (which may be brilliant but almost inevitably involve some degree of projection) from the author's own intents and purposes (as far as they can be known) you are left with an explication that may bear little resemblance to what the author was thinking as he/she sat down to write. I'm inferring that Ms. Clark intended Delaney Wright to be her main character since the prologue begins with the story of her birth. However, this is somewhat belied by the fact that there are several intertwining stories in the book, some of which offer more drama than that of Delaney's search for her parents.

This at least is my perception. Ms. Clark certainly has a Demeter and Persephone theme going in which Delaney plays the Kore role, although she is a particularly well-adjusted Persephone. In her case, a successful life is shadowed by her need to know her origins but is not consumed by it, and this may be the reason I didn't sense as much dramatic tension in her part of the story. The real center of the action, it seemed to me, was the murder plot in which a wealthy woman is accused of murdering her husband, a victim of Alzheimer's disease, in order to marry her old flame. Betsy Grant is loved and respected by a wide group of friends, but the circumstances of her husband's death make it very difficult for someone who doesn't know her to see her as anything but guilty. Most people believe she snapped under the pressure of her husband's illness, a perception largely influenced by the fact that the only other person with a clear motive has an alibi.

It wasn't until the various subplots began to fall together into one storyline that the identity of the guilty party became obvious, and that was late in the novel. To try to ascribe mythic personalities to the characters involved in the murder plot would be to reveal too much to those who haven't read the story, but it's true to say that the motivation behind the crime is different than it appears to be. I noted in passing the motif of "three," common in folk tales and fairy tales, in this case embodied in the character of Dr. Grant, the murdered man, and his two partners, all three of them orthopedic surgeons. The theme of healing is turned on its head by the murder; ironically, Dr. Grant is killed by a pestle, a symbol of medicine given to him as an award for his professional accomplishments. There's even a deus ex machina of sorts in a talkative burglar named Tony Sharkey.

What I really think this story is about (and Ms. Clark might contradict me) is marriage. I say that because most of the characters appear most often in conjunction with their spouses (or former spouses), in a series of more or less successfully--sometimes much less successfully--matched pairs. The story jumps from one to the other of these private dramas in succession. Delaney's not being married is one thing that sets her apart from all of this domesticity.

Actually, I was reminded of nothing less than Ingmar Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage. Bergman's theme was the public face of a seemingly successful couple and how greatly that can differ from married life as experienced by the couple themselves, especially as the relationship unfolds over time. It struck me as curious that the purported heroine of As Time Goes By so often takes a back seat to these other characters. She is a Persephone surrounded by Zeus and Hera types, a circumstance that certainly underscores her "orphan" state. Maybe that's the point, but for me the pathos of her story paled somewhat in comparison to the theatrics of the married couples, which I found more entertaining.

I doubt if it was Ms. Clark's express purpose to throw the limelight onto a secondary character, but I was most interested in the relationship between Dr. Grant's former partner, Scott Clifton, and his spouse, Lisa, for whom the phrase "trophy wife" seems appropriate. Lisa has given up her successful pharmaceutical sales career to marry Dr. Clifton and is in the process of realizing how empty the relationship is when we first meet her. She first tries to save the marriage, but when she realizes it has all gone south and is not coming back, she calls up the movers and arranges to get her old job back. Nothing wrong with a can-do spirit; she is one of the few characters who refuse to be constrained by circumstance.

Undoubtedly, Ms. Clark was more interested in telling an entertaining tale than in anything else, but I found the way in which all of these married couples kept stealing Delaney's thunder to be so pointed that I had to wonder if the author was being at least slightly satirical. I can't say for sure. I went so far as to look at the author's picture on the back of the book, and she does strike me as a person who is fully in control of her material, so who knows, maybe she was pulling our leg a little bit. I also noted with approval how well-groomed, poised, and successful she appears, all good characteristics in any writer, and qualities to which we may all aspire.

Sweets to the Sweet

Just before Valentine's Day, there was a news article online summarizing the advantages and disadvantages of married vs. single life in several categories, including health, finances, and emotional well-being. It was--if I may say so--notably even-handed in pointing out that there are ways in which being single can be superior to being married, something that's worth remembering. You'll get no arguments from me against the idea of wedded bliss, except that achieving it seems so darn tangled up in issues of human frailty and other variables. Of course, if you're married, you don't need to be reminded of that.

Would you agree that it's better to be alone than to be with the wrong person? I think of it along the same lines as the home owner's vs. renter's argument, which I have also had presented to me as a fait accompli on the side of buying, as if renting were merely the same preliminary and temporary step on the way to home ownership as singlehood is to marriage (though some financial advisors, in fact, say that home buying is a lifestyle choice more than anything). I'm never quite sure why people are so dead set on getting others to embark on a course which has little more than a 50-50 chance (according to some estimates) of succeeding. I sometimes think that if more people managed to get out of their 20s, as I did, without tying the knot, they might have a different outlook on the whole question. I was miserable during most of my 20s while everyone around me was getting married, but for some reason, once I passed the 3-0 threshold and took a deep breath, it was kind of fun (though scary) to be a holdout.

Yesterday I was reading a biography of William Shakespeare in which the author, Stephen Greenblatt, recounted the evidence regarding the playwright's married life, particularly the issue of whether he was happy or not. The biographer admitted that assessing this is very hard to do, but he pointed out that there are few signs evincing a happily married state in Shakespeare's portrayals of married couples. Greenblatt didn't address the love sonnets in that section, but he did say there was plenty of poetic precedent for keeping marital expectations low and directing your longing toward someone else (as in the case of Dante, who was never married to Beatrice). The idea of looking to your marriage for true companionship really took hold later, Greenblatt says, as part of the new sober-mindedness swept in with the Protestant Reformation.

I do wonder sometimes whether people today put too many expectations on marriage, but as someone who's never (yet) done it, it's nothing I can speak about from personal experience. In a spirit of bipartisanship, let me just say that I believe very much in personal choice on the married/single question, though choice should be leavened with wisdom whenever possible.

What I can speak about with authority is the best Valentine's Day cookie recipe I've ever come across, guaranteed to bring you, married or single, a few stolen moments of bliss, for as long as it takes to eat one. I offer the thought as a gift to my readers, a little late, though if you're one of those who think of every day as Valentine's Day, that doesn't signify. Now, pay attention, because it's not often that I give out recipes and practical hints, and this one is a keeper. I got the recipe from Delish online (they credit Martha Stewart), so if it's precision you're after, go there and look up Chocolate Sweet Hearts.

Even making these cookies is fun, because it involves melting chocolate, brown sugar, and butter over a saucepan of simmering water until you have, basically, a bowl of molten chocolate. How many things under the sun are as delectable as that? You stir an egg into this and then combine it with a flour-cocoa-baking soda mixture. Where I part company with the recipe is in using my special Valentine hearts pan, which has six large heart-shaped cavities into which you press the prepared dough. After you bake them for 12 minutes or so, they come out of the pan in lovely heart shapes, no two alike, some with scalloped edges, some with little x's and o's, and some with hearts within hearts.

Here's the only caveat: you have to watch the timing. Last year, I left them in a little too long, and they were too crisp around the edges. This year, I took them out a little too soon, and they were a bit soft, though still delicious when they cooled. When you make them into big cookies like I do, they have the texture and taste of brownies. I eat one with a glass of milk after dinner, and it's perfectly wonderful. In fact, I still have some chocolate to use up, so I may have to make another batch once this one is gone.

Just one woman's idea of a great way to celebrate Valentine's Day, sans recriminations, sans jealousy, and sans hard feelings to ruin the holiday. Of course, one advantage to being single in this case is that there's more for you and you don't have to share. You may, quite rightly, point out to me that sharing often makes things more fun--and I agree completely. So if you're married, I simply advise you to double the recipe. That way, you and your partner can enjoy six full days of chocolate bliss, just as I do. I've still got one cookie left, and it's going to taste just as good as the first one did.

Sweets to the sweet (and that is Shakespeare).