The Lonely Polygamist
Brady Udall, 2010
W.W. Norton & Co.
602 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393062625
Summary
Golden Richards, husband to four wives, father to twenty-eight children, is having the mother of all midlife crises. His construction business is failing, his family has grown into an overpopulated mini-dukedom beset with insurrection and rivalry, and he is done in with grief: due to the accidental death of a daughter and the stillbirth of a son, he has come to doubt the capacity of his own heart.
Brady Udall, one of our finest American fiction writers, tells a tragicomic story of a deeply faithful man who, crippled by grief and the demands of work and family, becomes entangled in an affair that threatens to destroy his family’s future. Like John Irving and Richard Yates, Udall creates characters that engage us to the fullest as they grapple with the nature of need, love, and belonging.
Beautifully written, keenly observed, and ultimately redemptive, The Lonely Polygamist is an unforgettable story of an American family—with its inevitable dysfunctionality, heartbreak, and comedy—pushed to its outer limits. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—St. Johns, Arizona, USA
• Education—B.A., Brigham Young University; Iowa Writers'
Workshop
• Currently—lives in Boise, Idaho
Brady Udall grew up in a large Mormon family in St. Johns, Arizona. He graduated from Brigham Young University and later attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. He was formerly a faculty member of Franklin & Marshall College starting in 1998, then Southern Illinois University, and now teaches writing at Boise State University.
A collection of his short stories titled Letting Loose the Hounds was published in 1998, and his debut novel The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint was first published in 2001. The characterization and structure of the latter has been favorably compared to the work of John Irving. Thematically it has been compared to Charles Dickens. Michael Stipe has optioned a film adaptation of Miracle, with United Artists hiring Michael Cuesta to direct.
In 2010 he published The Lonely Polygamist to both critical and popular acclaim and which climbed rapidly on the best seller lists.
Extras
• In July 2007, Udall appeared on an episode of This American Life.
• Udall is a member of the Udall family, a U.S. political family rooted in the American West. Its role in politics spans over 100 years and four generations and includes his great-uncles former U.S. congressman and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and former congressman and presidential candidate Morris Udall. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
It is funny, it can be moving, it is ambitious and it is tender about man's endless absurdities and failings.... Sometimes, reading The Lonely Polygamist, one wishes the author had a little less respect, but then the book might be that much less charming.
Eric Weinberger - New York Times
In Brady Udall's audacious, frequently funny new novel, the polygamous patriarch is just a poor, henpecked schmo.... Udall's blunt, empathetic portrait paints the polygamist as a beleaguered and bewildered Everyman. Golden can't keep his three households from warring with one another, let alone make their inhabitants happy.... Telling a story that perpetually unsettles our expectations, Udall whipsaws between moods and roves among points of view.
Wendy Smith - Washington Post
A family drama with stinging turns of dark comedy, the latest from Udall (The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint) is a superb performance and as comic as it is sublimely catastrophic. Golden Richards is a polygamist Mormon with four wives, 28 children, a struggling construction business, and a few secrets. He tells his wives that the brothel he's building in Nevada is actually a senior center, and, more importantly, keeps hidden his burning infatuation with a woman he sees near the job site. Golden, perpetually on edge, has become increasingly isolated from his massive family—given the size of his brood, his solitude is heartbreaking—since the death of one of his children. Meanwhile, his newest and youngest wife, Trish, is wondering if there is more to life than the polygamist lifestyle, and one of his sons, Rusty, after getting the shaft on his birthday, hatches a revenge plot that will have dire consequences. With their world falling apart, will the family find a way to stay together? Udall's polished storytelling and sterling cast of perfectly realized and flawed characters make this a serious contender for Great American Novel status.
Publishers Weekly
Udall's long-awaited novel (after The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint) depicts a lively, humorous, and sometimes tragic picture of Golden Richards, his four demanding wives, and his 28 children. They are an unruly Mormon clan, scattered among three separate houses in rural Utah. Richards, a hapless graying contractor with a limp and a sinus condition, supports them with his less-than-successful construction business. To avoid bankruptcy, he takes a job in Nevada, a project he tells everyone is a senior citizens' home but in fact it is a bordello. That's only one of Golden's secrets. The sister wives hold weekly summits to schedule Golden's visits from wife to wife, house to house. He doesn't have a home of his own, so he frequently takes refuge in a playhouse built for a daughter who died in a tragic accident. In trying to help, he often makes things worse, but he valiantly makes one last effort to bring harmony to his fractious family. Verdict: Udall observes with a keen eye for the ridiculous while showing compassion. Think of the zany theatrics of Carl Hiaasen paired with the family drama of Elizabeth Berg. Enthusiastically recommended. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Library Journal
Unhappy families are different, quoth Leo Tolstoy—even when they're headed by the same patriarch, the situation from which Udall's (The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, 2001, etc.) latest unfolds. "There's hard things we have to do in this life," says a wizened desert rat to an existentially confused Golden Richards, the protagonist. "We bite our lip and do 'em. And we pray to God to help us along the way." Golden is in need of such guiding words. At 48, he calls three houses home, each of them stuffed full of children. Things aren't going well out in the world that he's unsuccessfully tried to keep at bay; his construction business is mired in recession, and he's working in Nevada, far away from the comforts of home(s). To complicate matters, Golden, though already blessed or burdened with three wives, has taken up with another woman, a fringe effect of which is that now he has a fondness for mescal. Golden's life occasions a series of hard choices and often-rueful meditations, and Udall smartly observes how each plays out. His novel opens with a tumultuous welter of children who, though tucked away in a remote corner of Utah, have access to all the media and know, aptly, what a zombie is. As Golden's saga progresses, he learns about the mysteries of such things as condoms (as a friend meaningfully says, "so you don't go fucking yourself out of a spot at the dinner table") and the endless difficulties and intrigues of family politics, with all their plots against the patriarchal throne. Udall layers on real history with the tragedy of atomic testing in the Southwestern deserts of old, and imagined tragedy with some of the unexpected losses Golden must endure. In the end, Udall's story has some of the whimsy of John Nichols's The Milagro Beanfield War but all the complexity of a Tolstoyan or even Faulknerian production—and one of the most satisfying closing lines in modern literature, too. Fans of the HBO series Big Love will be pleased to see an alternate take on the multi-household problem, and lovers of good writing will find this a pleasure, period.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What were your views on polygamy before reading the book? Did they change after you finished reading?
2. Discuss Golden’s progression from lonely polygamist to social polygamist. How does a renewal of faith assist this transformation?
3. Compare and contrast Golden’s behavior at the two funerals. How are they similar? In what ways are they different?
4. How does Glory affect the other family members and Golden in particular?
5. Discuss the motifs of creation and destruction that appear throughout the novel.
6. Do you think Rusty is a representative figure for all of the Richards children in the novel, or is he in some ways unique?
7. Trish is one of the most conflicted mothers in the novel. What do you think of her decision at the end? Was it the right thing to do?
8. How has the family changed at the conclusion of the novel? Do you think they are happy with their decisions?
9. Discuss Rose-of-Sharon’s reaction to Rusty’s accident. Do you think you would have reacted the same way if you were in her place?
10. Why do you think Golden isn’t able to consummate his affair with Huila?
11. Physical appearance is described with exacting clarity throughout the novel. Golden is described as bucktoothed and “Sasquatch,” and Glory as “lopsided” and “overstuffed.” Why do you think there is such a heightened awareness of the body?
12. What is the effect of polygamy on the women in the novel? How do you think their lives and personalities would be different if they weren’t in a polygamous relationship?
(Questions issued by publisher.)