jimmyranda

This was a strange little novel. It explores what can happen to a person’s life at the crossroads of fate. If they’d stayed at school later, ran a little faster or slower on the way home, looked both ways before crossing the street. What happens if the life you imagine while your laying in your hospital bed - where you didn’t do any or all of the above - what happens if that life actually begins being lived? I should mention that this is also a confusing novel, if you try to think about it too deeply. The main character - Carolyn in the imaginary world and Caro in the life actually lived - isn’t really redeemable in either version of her life. In one she’s a repressed housewife who lets her husband walk all over her and who keeps getting pregnant not so much because she wants children, but because she’s afraid to be a person on her own as her kids age. In the other, while she’s a much stronger person, she lacks the moral values to see what’s wrong with being a mistress to a married man. I read this from my personal worldview though, of course, so maybe Caro is supposed to be the idealized character in this story. But the only major male character in the novel Alan - is definitely irredeemable. An inattentive - and sometimes borderline abusive - husband, a never-there father, a drunkard and a cheat. The confusion comes in when Alan - Carolyn’s husband - meets and has an affair with Caro. Something that obviously shouldn’t happen. But despite the converging of true and fake realities, despite the confusion and the irredeemable traits of the characters - I couldn’t help but like this novel. In the end I could see hope in both Carolyn and Caro - and possibly even a future as a non-asshole for Alan. While not truly redeemed in the book, maybe they would have been in the future. I also happen to like a little oddity in the books I read, so the impossibility of it all was something I could get beyond. And the language of the book itself is just gorgeous. At some points the writing is more poetry than prose, and those moments are worth reading the book for themselves.

2023-02-04 05:11