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Lunch
at the Piccadilly, by Clyde Edgerton. Algonquin Books, 2003; 264
pages; $23.95 hardcover. Reviewed by Melissa Ussery Intintolo
Starting with the
prologue to Lunch at the Piccadilly, a dialogue between a
beleaguered caregiver and the financial manager of the Rosehaven
Convalescent Home, Clyde Edgerton lets the reader know he is intimately
acquainted with the Machiavellian intricacies of socialized medical care:
"Medicare will cover the first sixty days but not the first seven hundred
and sixty-four dollars of a benefit period. A benefit period is up when
the patient hasn’t gotten any skilled care in a nursing home for sixty
days…" And it matters – in his deft hands, life and death, and love and
loss are handled with grace and dignity, and, most important, humor.
Seen through
the eyes of Carl Turnage, nephew of Rosehaven resident Lil Olive, life in
this community of elders is challenging but never boring. First, Carl has
to keep his elderly aunt from driving, even though this is her greatest
wish; second, he has to manage his own desire for the comely nursing home
social services director; and finally, he struggles with his own dream of
becoming a country musician. Interesting characters and their stories
engage the reader: Preacher L. Ray Flowers wants to start a new
evangelical movement to combine churches and nursing homes (“Nurches of
America”), Aunt Lil and her pals Beatrice Satterwhite, Clara Cochran, and
Maudie Lowe steal a car just to prove they are still able to drive, and we
learn what everyone eats at the Piccadilly Cafeteria.
Edgerton handles
the poignancy of growing old and losing and regaining faith with his
characteristic, appealing light touch. In one of the best chapters,
“Thunder Road,” Lil, Clara, and Beatrice take a ride in a car not their
own. Edgerton describes elegantly and without bathos the ladies’ growing
anxiety. When Lil can’t figure out where the traffic lights are on the
highway and runs a red light, Clara decries their closeness to death:
“You’re going to kill us all.” Beatrice replies, “I feel like I’m already
dead most of the time.” These one-line jewels perfectly evoke the
moribund humor that makes spending time with the people we care for – or,
if we’re lucky, who have cared for us – pleasurable until the end of our
days.
Part of this book originally appeared in Carolina Quarterly, Vol.
50, No. 3 as “Lunch at the Piccadilly.”
A
Company of Three, by Varley O’Connor. Algonquin Books, 2003; 309
pages; $24.95 hardcover. Reviewed by
Jenny McCraw
Varley O’Connor sets up the dynamic trio of her second novel in the
opening sentence. “Patrick and I had been friends for a year,” the
narrator tells us, “when Irene appeared in our acting class, as if she had
raced to New York expressly to meet us.” And so begins this ambitious,
complex, and engaging story of three friends trying to make it in the
world of theatre in 1970s New York.
Robert Holt, the narrator, and his friends Patrick O’Doherty
and Irene Jane Walpers run the risk of being oversimplified: Robert could
just be the hardworking, good-looking actor ready to compromise his art in
order to find a job, Patrick could just be the larger-than-life gay
ex-dancer, and Irene could just be the small-town girl with a wild past.
But O’Connor avoids these simple molds, creating rich characters who have
pasts, presents, and futures, and are somewhat uncertain about all three.
O’Connor relates the ups and downs of theatre life with
authority, but to say that this novel is only about acting would be
misleading. The world of theatre is simply the setting in which these
characters exist, interact, and develop, and their relationships go far
beyond the stage. For instance, when the three go to a small town in
Missouri to act in a series of plays, the relationship between Irene and
Robert reaches a new level, causing tension with Patrick and resulting in
an even more complicated triangle.
Characterization is the novel’s strong point. Robert, Patrick,
and Irene truly come to life over the course of months and years, never
ceasing to surprise. Early in the novel, the dialogue seems at times too
stagy, the characters too dramatic. Irene tells Robert about one of her
lovers, “Neal is terribly successful. He’s on a soap and has all these
commercials. We rendezvous at the Waldorf-Astoria. He’s stuck in a
terrible marriage.” But as the story progresses, these
qualities become part of the rhythm of the novel, blending into the
reality of the characters.
Overall, O’Connor’s second novel sparkles, creating a world
unfamiliar to many readers but with situations and relationships that can
ring true for almost anyone.
Old School, by Tobias Wolff, Alfred
A. Knopf, 2003; 195 pages; $22 hardcover. Reviewed by Amy Weldon
Serious writers and readers are so used
to admiring Tobias Wolff as the Writer Who’s Done It All – with three
masterful short story collections, two famous memoirs, and an outstanding
teaching record at Stanford University – that it’s surprising to realize
that Old School is his first novel. Yet despite its slim size and
simple plot – a New England prep-school scholarship boy makes a desperate
bid for Ernest Hemingway’s attention – this novel not only revisits
familiar themes but breaks new ground. Humorous yet elegaic, Old
School is Wolff’s impressive entry into his last unexplored prose
genre.
Over several years, the novel’s unnamed narrator contends for
an audience with the school’s visiting writers – Robert Frost, Hemingway,
and Ayn Rand, portrayed with biting humor. His competitors are the other
“book-drunk boys,” awkwardly chivalrous and idealistic, whose work is
instantly recognizable to anyone who’s ever known, or been, such an
adolescent: the pedantic literary-review editor, the self-styled
“bohemian” child of wealth, and the Hemingway-worshipping roommates who
joke to each other, in imitation of their idol, “That is your bed, and it
is a good bed, and you must make it and you must make it well.”
Although its evocation of the Kennedy era is impeccable and
its cast of academic characters – including a nubile young faculty wife
and a distinguished dean with a secret – is engaging, Old School
works best as a novel about writing itself. Its major themes – lying,
pretending, and longing to slip into other identities – are not only
features of Wolff’s other work (especially his memoir This Boy’s Life)
but of the writing life itself. Old School is a nuanced portrayal
of a young man falling – and staying – in love with words. “I wanted to
receive the laying on of hands that had written living stories and poems,”
the narrator says. “I wanted to be anointed.” By the end of the novel,
his love has ripened: “The life that produces writing can’t be written
about. It is a life carried on without the knowledge of even the writer,
below the mind’s business and noise, in deep unlit shafts where phantom
messengers struggle toward us, killing one another along the way.“ Old
School can remind us all of why we love reading and writing, and why
we love Tobias Wolff. |
