LitPicks - December '09

Domestic Disturbances:  Ah, marital bliss...a bumpy road toward a dubious destination. Doesn't bliss depend on ignorance? Here are three stories—memoir, fiction, drama—of marriages in which a sustaining relationship depends on self-knowledge, not the bliss of ignorance.

A Lighter Touch | Wonderfully Written | Great Works



The Motion of the Ocean
Janna Cawrse Esarey, 2009
336 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
She calls him an a**hole in the very 1st sentence: he's the skipper of the boat...and also her husband. Yet by the 3rd sentence, you're feeling the initial pangs of love (this is a guy who cooks; need I say more?); by the 3rd chapter, you're completely hooked. Graeme is a champ and a heart throb.

But this is Janna's story—and so, you wonder, what's wrong with her? That's the real subject of this charming, humorous travel memoir.

Newly weds, Janna and Graeme, with a 10-year on-again-off again history, decide to sail the Pacific Rim—from Seattle to Central America, the South Sea islands, Hong Kong, and back home to Seattle. In two years.

It is, of course, a journey of self-exploration, and Janna hides nothing: her insecurities, her defen-siveness, a paralyzing stubbornness and self-righteousness, frequent crying jags, and a penchant to over-analyze everything—from her marriage to the best toilet in a public restroom. In short, she's human. And yet...she's self-aware, self-deprecating, and courageous. Like all of us, she's struggling to find her way (on the ocean and in her marriage)—an effort which will endear her to anyone who picks up this delightful, funny, and smart book.

Lots of fascinating information, too—about boats, ocean cruising, geography, weather, island culture, and the close-knit-yet-far-flung network of people who exchange land-locked lives for the motion of the ocean. There's even a riff on the color blue, like Melville's famous chapter on white. And for book clubs? A terrific read: lots of grist for the mill...or wind for your sails.

Be sure to see our Reading Guide for The Motion of the Ocean. Oh, and watch the neat video trailer on Janna's website. It's a hoot.

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That Old Cape Magic
Richard Russo, 2009
272 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
Jack Griffin is spending more time with his father dead than when he was alive. Fact is, he's been carrying his father's ashes around in his car trunk for the past nine months...and can't seem to part with them. A nice piece of symbolism, funny, if a little obvious.

To make short order of the synopsis (because there's so much more to write about with this book): Griffin is in the midst of a full-blown midlife crisis— dissatisfied in his career (college professor) and his once-perfect marriage. He's stuck in the doldrums and trying to figure a way out.

Richard Russo does here what he does so well in other books: he limns the lives of his heroes by knotting them together with the past and with a large array of characters, all of whom are muddling through. In every novel, marriages are examined, childhoods plumbed, parents evoked. It's always done with brilliant one-liners and a rich, deeply readable prose style.

Cape Magic is no different—just shorter, and maybe funnier. Okay, predictable...and, yes, a bit pat at the end. But no matter, it's thoroughly engaging and hard to put down.

The most indelible characters are Griffin's parents, academics, who hate where they teach (Indiana) and believe they deserve better (Ivy League...or anywhere in New England rather than the"Mid-f**king-west" where they're stuck). They're miserable—and miserable to one another, to their colleagues, and to anyone they come across, including at times their son. They're so awful, they're hilarious.

And so awful that Griffin wants to put as much distance as he can between them and himself. But funny thing happened to Griffin on the way to mid-life: he ends up more like his parents than he realizes. Joy, his wonderful, life-embracing wife, knows this—and thus we get a full-blown domestic disturbance.

There is so much funny writing here that to quote any of it would take...a book. But don't mistake Russo's humor for superficiality. His comedy, some of it slapstick, overlies a mordancy, a humor that hits the mark and penetrates.

Then there are his characters, recognizable because they're mirror-like in reflecting basic truths. Which truths? This one for starters—life is what we get, not what we want. But if we can want what we get...well, you know where this is going. Anyway, to accept with grace what you end up with is no mean feat. Not for anyone, certainly not for Griffin. Don't miss this book.

See our LitLovers Reading Guide for That Old Cape Magic.

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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Edward Albee, 1961
272 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
Rough stuff, maybe more than you've a mind for. But if you're up to it, Edward Albee's dramatic masterpiece can be bracing, to say the least, as well as powerful and illuminating. It's marriage at its absolute worst...and, perhaps strangely, at its best. You be the judge.

George and Martha, a middle-aged college professor and his wife go at each other red-in-tooth-and-claw. They're at home, having returned from a party earlier in the evening. It's already 2:00 a.m. when Nick and Honey arrive; a young couple new to the campus, they've stopped on their way home at Martha's invitation.

The games begin immediately, viciously, hilariously. They're word games and sexual gambits—at heart, warfare, which pierces, even strips away, protective armor and aims for the gut. The goal is to reveal and humiliate. At first, only George and Martha play, but in this drama, there are no by-standers; Nick and Honey get pulled into the fray.

Yet beneath the madness and spite, Who's Afraid is a love story, of two wounded individuals coping with failure and sorrow. In the end, Martha—the same man-devouring Martha who earlier lured Nick to her bedroom—admits, "There is only one man who has ever made me happy. Do you know that? One!" It's George, of course, and the couple share a desperate secret, a sorrow that has bound them to one another for 20 years.

Plays are written to be performed, so do watch the superb 1966 film version with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor—who portray George and Martha in all their magnificent, flawed humanness. Also, Kathleen Turner stared to great acclaim in a 2005 stage revival, though I've yet to find it on film. Too bad.

A Reading Guide is in the works.

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