After reading most of Anna Quindlen's books, I want to know this:
How does Anna Quindlen do that?Now, before you ask, "Do
what?", here's the
what: How does she managed to turn the most intense, earth-shattering experiences into a novel without making it earth-shattering to the world?
Huh?Okay, let me clarify this. In each of her novels, the main characters are living their lives, flowing along like a gentle stream, when something suddenly, sometimes catastrophically, explodes their lives into a thousand pieces, while barely making a blip in the world around them. True, there are ripples in the water of their lives, as in real life: a car accident caused by a drunk driver doesn't affect simply the people in the other car who are hurt, it also affects the drunk driver's family, friends, and possibly coworkers. But in the overall scheme of things, these experiences and happenings don't have the larger scale impact of, say, the 9/11 attacks or the falling of the Berlin Wall.
I read my first Quindlen novel shortly after its release. In
Black And Blue, Fran Benedetto is a nurse and a battered wife, married to Bobby, a New York City police officer, and the mother of Robert, a boy who has learned to keep quiet. The book tells how Fran's life is normal, at least to those around her. Her secret is the horrific abuse Bobby puts her through, forcing her to leave her job, pack a scant few items, and, with Robert, go into hiding in Florida, changing their names in the process. Now Beth and Robert Crenshaw, they live in a rundown duplex. Fran/Beth is now forced to work as a home health aid, rather than as a nurse, in an effort to stay under the radar. Eventually, though, Bobby finds her, savagely beats her, takes Robert with him, then goes into hiding, himself.
Yet, throughout the book, with its horrible undertone of abuse, Quindlen is able to write
Black And Blue as calmly as though writing about the weather. It is in the words she chooses to use and the way she has Fran Benedetto/Beth Crenshaw tell her story that we learn feel and experience the undercurrents of Fran, Bobby, and Robert's lives, as well as the lives effected by being in proximity.
In
One True Thing, the Gulden family come across as a loving middle-class family, replete with college professor father, homemaker mother, a daughter, two younger sons. On the surface, the Guldens seem so normal, living normal lives: daughter Ellen, whose voice tells the story, has finished college and taken a job in New York City, while her brothers live at home and try to finish school.
The event that rips the Gulden family's life apart is a cancer diagnosis. Ellen comes home for a few days to find that her mother has been ill for quite some time. Her father, who has to work and is unable to care for Ellen's mother, demands that she quit her job and move back home to care for the family, which understandably causes tension throughout the entire household. When Mrs. Gulden dies, Ellen is suspected of murder; she suspects her father killed her mother, but in the end, suspects the truth.
One True Thing is also written in such a way that the reader feels like part of the action, part of the family; it is almost as if Ellen is telling the reader personally, "Remember when you and I came home? This is how I saw it." The reader is there, digging in, experiencing the roller-coaster ride without realizing, at first, how high or low the ride is going. It is simply life at its most basic.
Quindlen's book
Rise And Shine details a morning show anchor and her social worker sister, the "fighting Fitzmaurices," as the former's soon-to-be ex-husband calls them. Meghan Fitzmaurice utters two words that get her into trouble from the network. Soon, she is without a job, her husband has decided to file for divorce (apparently the weekend before Meghan mutters "f#*king a**hole" under her breath - but loud enough for the mics to pick up), her sister Bridget is struggling with work and an unplanned pregnancy while in her early forties...But what really explodes is when Meghan's son Leo is shot and left paralyzed while volunteering for the group where Bridget works as a social worker.
In
Blessings, a teen-aged couple drives onto Lydia Blessing's estate late one night and leave a box by the door of the garage apartment where estate caretaker, Skip Cuddy, stays. In the morning, Skip finds the infant and decides to care for the child. Soon, Lydia learns of the infant; the story tells how the baby changes the lives she touches, without being aware of it.
Finally, I found
Every Last One to be Quindlen's most startling novel. Mary Beth Latham is a mother who owns her own landscape business. Mary Beth and her husband have three children: a daughter and twin sons, one of whom becomes depressed. Mary Beth focuses on this son, but is soon blindsided when a boy who has hung around her family breaks in and murders her husband, daughter, and one son before taking his own life. The other son had been away with friends on a weekend trip; at first, since he wasn't at the house, he is temporarily considered a suspect. Mary Beth, who was also brutally beaten in the attack, somehow manages to survive.
Eventually, Mary Beth and her remaining son move in with friends, then sell the house that their family was destroyed in so that they can get away from the horrible memories, or, rather, as much as one can.
As with her other novels, Quindlen has taken
Every Last One, describes a normal family living the normal life before having a horrific act destroy their lives. The remaining characters are now left to try to carry on while dealing with so much: the horrors they've experienced; the murderer's mother who calls Mary Beth, blaming her for the horrors of her son's actions; knowing that, while others around them will go on with their own lives, she and her son will have to reinvent their family while trying to heal.
Most of us have learned in English and/or lit classes that a story must have some obstacle that needs to be dealt with to be worth telling and to keep the readers' interest. The best authors - the ones we continue to go back to time and again - have learned how to do this. Anna Quindlen is one of those authors who can slip that obstacle in the way it appears in real life: one moment, life is normal, the next moment, it isn't. A spouse if abusive and the other spouse goes into hiding; a daughter comes home for a weekend, only to discover a parent's terminal illness; a mic is left open a second too long and a bullet finds its target; a pregnancy; a murder. Yet, after that obstacle, Quindlen shows us how those left to deal with the aftermath deals with it.
I seriously hope Anna Quindlen is working on another novel; chances are, it'll be a keeper.
Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg
