Morality Tale
Sylvia Brownrigg, 2008
Counterpoint Press
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781458771964
Summary
Morality Tale is a novel about the triangular complications in a modern marriage, and the comedy that flows from them.
When this novel's unnamed narrator meets the elusive but exciting Richard (an envelope salesman with a nice layman's line in Zen philosophies), he offers her a friendly escape from her dreary domestic life.
Burdened by her husband's ongoing negotiations with his angry ex-wife, the strains of looking after two stepchildren, and the lingering ghost of her own past betrayals, she finds that the life of a “second marryer” leaves much to be desired. As their friendship develops, so grows the shadow cast over her marriage, and when they make a late, illicit bay crossing on a ferryboat, the story gathers momentum under California's Mount Tamalpais.
There, in the fabled Golden State, Sylvia Brownrigg shows how even a layman's Zen can lead to some important revelations about the need to look forward, not back. Bristling with honesty and wit, Morality Tale explores the triangular complications that can befall a modern marriage and the tragicomic forces that surround them. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Raised—Los Altos, California, USA
• Education—Yale University, Johns Hopkins Uiversity
• Awards—Lamda Award for Fiction
• Currently—lives in Berkeley, CA
Sylvia Brownrigg is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction: four novels, Morality Tale, The Delivery Room, Pages for You, and The Metaphysical Touch, and a collection of stories, Ten Women Who Shook the World.
Sylvia's works have been included in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times lists of notable fictions and have been translated into several languages, and she has won a Lambda award for fiction.
Her short stories have appeared in Zoetrope: All Story, the art journal Frieze, and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as several anthologies. "The Bird Chick" was read on BBC Radio 4 and "Amazon" was one of NPR's Selected Shorts. In addition to writing fiction, Sylvia Brownrigg has also taught at the American University in Paris and been widely published as a reviewer and critic. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
"Isn't attraction mysterious?" asks the narrator of Morality Tale, Sylvia Brownrigg's divinely deadpan fourth novel, about an undernourished marriage and a love affair of the unconsummated kind.... Brownrigg's writing will remind readers of Carol Shields, whose quirky adjectives gave texture to her writing in a way that seemed effortlessly engaging and astute. Brownrigg describes an oversize diamond as "garish and nervous" and reduces a man's lost love to "'an overwhelming sense memory of the taste of her pound cake." Breathes there a more or less happily domesticated man or woman who hasn't experienced an extramarital crush? How interesting then, and how brave to tell a quiet, patient, witty tale in which "the 3 a.m. fantasies of our bodies together, Richard's and mine, were going to remain in their packaging, unopened, untested."
Elinor Lipman - New York Times Book Review
Brownrigg's quirky style makes every line count; she employs a kind of lively writing which recalls the work of Laurie Colvin. In fact, her narrative is punctuated with such concentrated wit that by this point in the story, more than halfway through the book, one may have forgotten its title and intent. Yet for all its crazy humour and diverting jumble of events, it is a morality tale. Good must be rewarded and the wicked punished, although there is nothing predictable about the route to this almost-happy ending.
Times Literary Supplement (London)
A tragicomic tale of woe told in chirpy tones.... Pan is spirited, with a talent for caricature. She sharply dissects the plight of a second wife. Surely, the moral she draws from her story—that husbands and wives need to treat each other with regard—is a worthy lesson.
Los Angeles Times
A witty parable, a slight but subtle dissection of modern marriage, its ideals and banalities, ghosts and bit-part players.... Illuminated by its sympathy toward its oddly innocent cast of characters, it presents the dilemmas of daily commitment and redemption in a form even burnt-out cynics might find palatable.
San Francisco Chronicle
Pan, the curiously nicknamed narrator of Brownrigg's trim latest novel, has come to realize the truth in the old saying, "What goes around comes around." It's been five years since her husband, Alan, left his wife for her, and she's disenchanted that their married lovemaking isn't as passionate as their adulterous action was. Plus, Alan barely helps around the house, Pan's not exactly enamored of her stepsons, and Alan is still hopelessly entangled with his combative ex, Theresa. So when Richard, a kindhearted envelope salesman, walks into the stationery store where Pan clerks, a harmless one-sided romance blooms in the form of letters Richard leaves for her. Of course, when Alan finds Richard's letters, he's less than understanding. The early charms of this novel, including an absorbing rendering of a suffocating and dreary marriage, soon wear thin: Pan becomes increasingly precious as an episode from her past is clumsily offered as an explanation for her disaffection, and her obtuseness about her meanness toward Theresa is frustrating. The setup is there, but the follow-through doesn't deliver.
Publishers Weekly
Emma Bovary wannabe ponders an alternative to her mundane domestic lifestyle in this dreamlike but grating modern fable. The unnamed narrator of Brownrigg's fifth work of fiction has grown tired of the life that her husband Alan has constructed for them, seemingly with little input from her. She quietly passes her days working in a stationary store; she puts up with Alan's constant contact with his ex-wife Theresa; and she reluctantly though tenderly helps him raise his two sons, Alan and Ryan. While she doesn't like admitting that anything is wrong with her marriage, she finds herself inexplicably drawn to Richard, a burly envelope salesman who visits her at work and initiates a series of weekly lunch dates at a nearby falafel stand. The two grow increasingly attached, though they don't act on any physical impulses, and the narrator is hard pressed to understand her attraction to Richard or his place in her life. Things unravel when Alan catches them holding hands in a park, then finds a pile of affectionate notes from Richard in her purse. His jealousy leads to a spiral of squabbles, spying and joint therapy sessions. But just when the narrator seems ready to rebel and run, a trip to her childhood home with Richard and the news that he is moving back to Chicago makes her understand that her life with Alan hasn't ended, that it just needs work. Because Brownrigg seems so dedicated to pinpointing the minute details often to blame for the downfall of a marriage, the melodramatic climax and optimistic ending seem inconsistent and a bit contrived. Her ability to lend an otherworldly feel to such a contemporary story, however, is commendable. Slow plotting and an exhaustingly cerebral narrator muffle the impact of the author's interesting experiments with tone.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Morality Tale:
1. What's wrong—or what does Pan find wrong—with her marriage? Why has she become dissatisfied? Is her dissatisfaction well-grounded?
2. Pan doesn't seem capable of understanding why she's attracted to Richard. Why is she?
3. Although drawn to one another, Pan and Richard restrain their physical involvement. Does that make any difference in terms of whether they are committing adultery? Are their luncheons, letter exchanges, etc. immoral?
4. Do you find Pan a sympathetic character. How would you describe her—is she funny, wise, witty, mean-spirted, irritating or tiresome?
5. What does Pan come to realize on the trip to Chicago...and why?
6. Do you like the book's ending. Is it convincing...or do you find it a bit manipulative and, perhaps, too pat?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)