Dan's Papers - September 5, 2008

Hilma Wolitzer's latest novel is set on the East End, mostly in Sagaponack and Springs, two towns that are unlikely to be linked together, one an affluent enclave, the other a modest locale for working and retired people. The plot goes back and forth between the towns, probing the lives and loves of three women, and depicting their very different worlds but their common joys and pains.

Lissy Snyder dwells in splendor at her mansion on the ocean yet spends a good portion of her time brooding about her status in the Page Turners, a summer book club of wealthy women, and her feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness. She worries about the moral issues raised by the novels she reads. Her pursuit of happiness isn't helped by her husband's virulent ex-wife and their two difficult children.

Retired college professor of English Literature, Angela Graves, moderates the Page Turners and encourages them to draw life lessons from the novels they read. She likes Lissy's honesty and openness, despite her constant failure to complete the assigned books. When discussing Villette by Charlotte Bronte, Angela sees herself and Lissy in two of the characters in the novel.

Young Michelle Cutty is a general purpose house-girl for Lissy. Despite being treated well, she has a resentful attitude towards Lissy and other people in her life, including her hard-working mother and fisherman boyfriend Hank. She is the stereotypical, snotty young girl you'd like to boot in the rear end.

Described this way, the novel may sound like "chick-lit lite," but it is more than that. The characters are believable and three-dimensional and it's easy to get absorbed in their troubled lives, especially Lissy and Angela who tote heavy baggage from long ago experiences.

A mix of secondary characters revolves around the three protagonists. Angela was deeply involved with Stephen and Valerie Keller who worked at the same Texas college as Angela. She became very close to their daughter Charlotte. They play critical roles in Angela's past and future life. Lissy's mother, the caustic Bernadette Ellis, didn't tell her the truth about her father's disappearance. Patrick Curran, hired by Lissy to entertain at a children's party, keeps calling her for an assignation that she comes close to accepting.

The author weaves in allusions to the books being discussed by the Page Turners and even includes a list of seven titles at the end of the novel. Her character Angela encourages the Page Turners to learn more about society as represented in the books, and "seeing oneself in the fictional other." Lissy naively asks, "If novels are all, like, about morality, why are there so many descriptions of rooms and gardens and gowns?" Angela tells her, "...that's only the wallpaper of the novel's soul." While discussing Mrs. Bridge by Evan Connell, Lissy defends the heroine against the rest of the book club, "Because she seems decent at heart, but weak, as if she can't escape her husband's spell." Angela proclaims, "She lives an inauthentic life," a comment that haunts Lissy. Michelle had overheard the discussion and reads part of the book, vowing never to be treated like the weak Mrs. Bridge and wondering if she too is leading an inauthentic life.

Wolitzer can turn a good phrase, "Now she opened her arms to Bernadette, who received her embrace as if there were a bramble bush between them." And "They all stared at her, as if a plant had inexplicably spoken..." And "After all that time, Michelle was without Hank, and she felt shaky and lopsided, like a table that requires a matchbook under its shorter leg..."

The denouement of the plot for the three women is somewhat abrupt and vaguely unsatisfactory after all we've invested in the characters. It's a minor reference but the wealthy women of the Page Turners supposedly go fishing on Hank's charter boat which, given their money and style, seems unlikely. One of them, the greatly envied Ardith, has a notorious fling with a restaurateur that ends with him being murdered by his wife, yet she takes her place again in Hampton society. Are we prudish to think she might have been shunned, at least for a little while?

But there are enough pleasures in the book to make it worthwhile. It's fun to read the description of Lissy running a birthday party for three-year olds, accompanied by their Hispanic nannies and a gaggle of grandmothers drinking spiked lemonade. At one point, Lissy wonders if "Money really wasn't everything. Maybe that's what she had learned from all of this...Wasn't it possible to keep the wallpaper without giving up the soul? Like the moral issues raised by the novels she's tried to read this summer, the thought made her sleepy."