« May 25, 2006 | Main | May 27, 2006 »
I finished this novel a week ago and I am still thinking about it.
This is one of those stories that can really unsettle you if you have anything in common with characters. In this case, Rachel and Ned and their teenage daughter Kate.
Disasters come in all shapes and sizes. With this novel Shapiro takes on a particular kind of disaster that few people have the courage to deal with directly. There are many novels out there about how families cope (or don't) when kids get cancer, or drive drunk and cause unending misery, or get involved with drugs. These are things things parents hear about every day. These are the things we prepare ourselves for, if only in the vaguest way. We imagine the police at the door, the phone call in the middle of the night. What we'd do. Who to call.
There's no big mystery about what will happen next if your kid is diagnosed with lymphoma. The details, sure. But you know there will be doctors and hospitals and tests and agony. A kid arrested for shoplifting or drunk driving, same thing: you have an idea of what will happen, who to turn to, that lawyers and courts will be involved. The impact it will all have on your child's future.
Shapiro tells a disaster story of another kind.
Your teenager goes off to camp one summer and comes back a different person. Somebody you don't recognize. Somebody who frightens you. And not in the usual acting-out teenager way. We all recognize that out of our own pasts. It's painful and hard to deal with, but it's familiar.
Ned and Rachel pick Kate up when she comes home from camp and they know immediately that there's something seriously wrong. It's a long time before they can put words to what they're observing. These are words to be avoided at all costs, when you're thinking about your own kid. I would venture that for most parents, psychosis is far more frightening than leukemia.
Kate's condition -- which is never spelled out clearly -- works like a sledge hammer on the family. As it must. Even the strongest bond between partners is tested by a disaster of this magnitude. Add to this already difficult situation an unexpected pregnancy and new baby, and the potential for heartbreak skyrockets.
I'm not going to say anything more about the plot. If this family survives, if they find a way to stay together, if Kate gets the help she needs -- you'll have to read the book. It's worth reading, but it's possibly more than some people could bear.
Here's an embarrassing confession: I never have. Not once. Not anything. I was a law-and-order kid in (Catholic) high school. At age 17 I had more chance of finding my way to the moon than to a place to buy (pot? grass? what did we call it, anyway.) And I never started drinking because genetically, the way I metabolize alcohol makes me a prime candidate for alcoholism. Lots of family history to support that one.
So now if I need a bump, what do I do? Sugar is the obvious option, but it's not very effective. Caffeine doesn't agree with me. Exercise! That does it for a lot of people... I hate it. I can't remember which one, but some astronaut said that he only had so many heart beats in his life, and he wasn't wasting any of them on jogging. (And please don't comment to tell me about the logical fallacy in that statement.)
As an A-type personality I used to daydream about speed. Speed, I was convinced, would be good. I could get more done. I would lose weight. Who needs to sleep anyway? But I'm not so self destructive that I would actually pursue this kind of fantasy.
People tell me how great it is that I'm writing full time. But you know what? I would love to be employed by somebody besides myself. It's hard always having to motivate yourself. If I play solitaire all day long inspite of a looming deadline, there's nobody there to poke me into activity. I've got to be a grownup all the time. Thus the fantasy (and it is a fantasy, I have no illusions about that) of some perfect drug that would provide that push.
Now I have to get back to work.