After I graduated from college, I worked at a large chain bookstore for a short time. I learned many things about bookselling, including The Customer Is Likely Crazy and Strollers Are Used For Stealing. One thing I learned that offended my bookish sensibilities is that when mass market paperbacks
(the little ones) don’t sell, many bookstores rip off the the covers and
return them for a refund. The books themselves go into the trash.
(As a side note, this process is called Book Stripping. I wondered if the employees with this responsibility were called Strippers.)
Since this chain bookstore was huge, there was a dumpster
full of books going into the garbage weekly. Sometimes I would fish out some of
the more appealing ones for myself, which was technically theft. Something Blue, Ann Hood’s fourth novel, was one of the books I dug out of….er…stole from the
trash.
I just recently sat down with another Hood novel, this one
acquired legally. The Obituary Writer has been sitting in my leaning stack for
years, and I decided to read it as part of the 2015 TBR Pile Challenge. I’m
glad I did, because this was a quick and easy read at a time when I feel mired
in enormous books that never seem to end.
This novel offers a close look at the grief experienced by two
characters – Claire, a 1960s suburban housewife, and Vivien, whose true love
vanished in the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. Hood is masterful at writing
about the texture of grief. Her characters show us different forms of grief: grief at the loss of a lover, the loss of a parent, the loss of a child, and
the loss of the self. They also allow us to consider different questions: What
role does hope play in survival? What is the difference between hoping and
pining? If the truth is terrible, would you rather be ignorant?
One of the things I most appreciate about this novel is the
historical detail (Mad Men fans, take notice!). Hood has decorated her novel so
precisely that we see the pattern on Claire’s living room wallpaper and we
taste Vivien’s salad. These details give a time-specific quality to some of the
characters’ experiences of grief (e.g. spiritual death via suburban ennui;
death from an influenza epidemic…). But Hood is also exploring the universal idea
of grief, as a ritual and as a potential trap.
There were many good things about The Obituary Writer. I
genuinely liked it. But it skates on the edge of a literary phenomenon that
drives me crazy: it is being marketed as “Women’s Fiction” (I say that it “skates
on the edge” because we DON’T get a glass of chardonnay and a pedicure when we
buy it. Too bad??). Women’s Fiction is a commercial category, a box, and I think
the box constrained Claire and Vivien. In this case, Hood took these wonderful,
well-drawn characters and tried to place them into the plot of a Lifetime Movie
of the Week (i.e. “something good” has to come of tragedy; loose ends must be
tied up within two hours; the audience sheds “good tears,” preferably in a
community of other women). Once the book was in the Lifetime Movie box, the
publisher added goofy reading group questions. I’m surprised there weren’t
roses and chocolate, too.
It is interesting that male authors’ readers don’t seem to
require the same coddling. Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín is another book about a
woman’s grief and the impact it has on her family. Tóibín, like Hood, focuses
on the small details of life after a loss. But the publisher doesn’t attach
questions to the end of that novel. Readers aren't asked, “…[D]o you find that sharing
stories helps people process emotion and come to terms with grief?”
Clearly, the correct answer to that question is “yes.” Hood herself
might be best known for sharing the story of the death of her young daughter
and her experiences with adoption. Her nonfiction writing is searing. You can
find an essay she wrote about those events here.
*The
photo of books coming out of the window is from the Hague's Meermanno
Museum.
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