The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 11 September 2010
by Andrew Sean Greer
San Francisco in 1953. It is a city that would become the center of the countercultural revolutions of the 1960s. But, by '53, the first stirrings of that change were starting to be seen. The Beat Generation was settling into the city's North Beach neighborhood, and poetry and street life would never be the same. Later in the fifties, of course, progressive change would come for minorities, the baby boomers, and, later, for gays. So, it is interesting author Greer would set his story in San Francisco, among characters for whom cultural revolution would make the most difference. Because of Greer's oblique flip-flop delivery of his story's details, it is hard to describe this book without giving away too many of its surprises to the reader. It is, as the title says, the story of a marriage, at least from the somewhat somber point of view of Pearlie Cook, a Kentucky native living in San Francisco's working class Sunset District, out by the beach and beneath almost perpetual fog.
Pearlie tells us of meeting her tall and handsome husband, Holland, by the beach one day after the end of World War 2, long after they had first known each other back in Kentucky. Soon, both their lives are turned upside down by the arrival of a man who knew her husband during the war, and who carries with him a kind of Devil's proposition for all of them. Much more than this one cannot say without giving away too much. Suffice to say, however, that Greer pulls in a surprising number of issues for certain groups struggling with subordinate roles in a society that would soon be changing in dramatic ways. Greer is a very coy writer. He plays with the reader's attention, with sly suggestions of key plot elements, and frequent flipping back in the tale, so that one has to rethink much of what we've read so far. There are sudden reveals that recast the story, leaving the reader on unsteady ground throughout much of the first half of the book. Perhaps this echoes the unsteady situation in which our protagonist finds herself, but maybe it's a risky choice for an author, as it can leave a reader questioning what comes at each turn of the page. At the least, it would be interesting to know how Greer got himself into the heads of his characters, to know what kind of research he did to come up with this intricate and sometimes compelling tale. In the end, though, Pearlie's obliquity leaves one small gap in the story. It is as if much of the relationship that is supposed to be the heart of the marriage is defined by a lack of communication between the husband and the wife. It gives us a portrait of married and family life which for this reader never crossed over into fully convincing. It is however poetically presented, almost hermetic, and raises some of the most important issues of our lives. How do we stay true to love?
Also by Greer: [The Path of Minor Planets]