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53 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Period Domestic Melodrama, May 14, 2008
It's relatively rare that I pick up a piece of non-genre contemporary American literature, my tastes just don't generally range that way. However, in this case, the cover caught my eye, and the jacket copy was promising enough to get me started. And once I dipped into the book, Greer's prose was more than enough to keep me reading all the way through. Even though the story is rather sparsely plotted, it brims with tension and intimacy until the very end, and I highly recommend it to readers who favor domestic dramas.
The story takes place in San Francisco, circa 1953, but not in the part of town books and films are usually set in. Rather, it mostly takes place in the Sunset, a neighborhood in the Western part of the city which rolls down from the hills to the Pacific (and one I once lived in, just off the same street as the protagonists). Narrated by Pearlie, the story tells of her childhood crush Holland, and her later marriage to him following WWII. It's clear from the start (and various oblique hints throughout) that there are some deep secrets in this story, both in terms of Holland, and in terms of the story itself. The first section ends with an attempt on the author's part to surprise the reader, although I suspect most (like myself) will have seen through the pretense quite early on.
The next section delves into Pearlie's attempt to understand Holland, who suffered some kind of unspecified injury during the war, leaving him with a "weak" heart. Her attempt to understand her husband is both aided and confused by the reappearance of his former boss, and this man's easy insertion into their life as their only friend. This builds up to a narrative revelation which pretty much every reader will have guessed long before Pearlie is let in on the secret. The final third of the book revolves around the choices that lie before Pearlie now that she has learned this particular secret, and readers will be silently willing her to make one choice or another as she agonizes over the best course of action.
Although it is tackling large themes, such as the nature of love, and what it means to be married, the novel is ultimately a period domestic melodrama, and may prove to be somewhat too cloying for some readers. However I tend to be pretty sensitive to that kind of stuff, and Greer's sharp and simple prose largely avoids any gooey sentiment. Pearlie and Holland's story is greatly helped by the keen attention to period, as the effects of the war linger on, and America is just moving into a period of prosperity and social change. Some of Greer's revelations aren't the shocks he perhaps intends them to be, but the story remains compelling nonetheless. It's a nice book for book clubs, as the thematic issues (love, marriage, race, class, etc.) are ripe for discussion.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Plot and characters improbable, December 6, 2008
I agree with those who found this novel lacking in depth and content. The central thesis of the novel just doesn't hold: how can Pearlie believe Buzz, with his story about an affair he had with her husband Holland, and never even mention it to him? I kept thinking thoughout the book that the author was going to make it clear that Buzz was creating this 'story' for some other purpose...but he doesn't; nor does anything ever happen between him and Holland. Pearlie never once reflects on her thoughts or feelings about homosexuality, and this is 1953!...but she does believe that her husband loved another person...improbable! I can believe that she would not speak about homosexuality, but she would certainly think about it, and the author does not reveal that in any way. Unlike the fantastic film Far From Heaven, attitudes about homosexuality, race and gender, are not explored from the cultural context of San Francisco 1953. Instead, Pearlie ponders the life of Ethel Rosenberg, a person quite unlike herself and her current life situation. I agree with the reader who noted that the author was unable to evoke a female, or black female character.
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49 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
"Improbable Possibilities", May 14, 2008
I am surprised to see so many novelists of distinction and readers as well declaring this novel a triumph. In my view, it's far from that, not even being very good, and this for a number of reasons. First of all, the surprising plot twists which occur far too often throughout the slim book violate the reasonable principle that experienced readers will prefer even impossible events if they've been made probable over merely possible events, if an author leaves such as just wildly improbable. Greer seems to have thought his readers resembled kids at an old Saturday matinee featuring serials rife with weekly cliff-hangers. Every 10 pages or so, I was tempted to bellow forth, "Yeah, right!"
The narrative of the book is a pastiche, consisting of borrowings from the film "Far From Heaven" as well as from two other fairly recent films having to do with the purchase of someone else's spouse. Greer, unlike Shakespeare, unfortunately does not improve upon his sources. From books, the author is heavily indebted to Stendhal's theories of crystalization in love and Proust's far more profound and moving treatments of time and erotic obsession. Perhaps most disappointing is Greer's inclination to present platitudes as fresh truths. Thus, the notion that no one can fully and finally understand anyone else, much less himself - Greer's philosophy here - is presented as tantamount to the discovery of the wheel. Unfortunately, this set of ideas, the basis by the way of the strikingly innovative dramaturgy in "Hamlet," emerges in this novel not as hard won truth but rather as easy cliche.
The three main characters, Pearlie, Buzz, and Holland, are all lacking in sufficient interiority to hold one's attention. As "vessels of consciousness," their vision is extraordinarily restricted. The central figure, Pearlie, I'd say, makes the rustic Emma Bovary by comparison appear a universal genius. The child Sonny, being sometimes bratty, and the dog Lyle, being frequently goofy, have between them more believable "life" than any of the three principals. I think the charater limitation here is equivalent to the one seen by Francis Bacon when he declared "It is a poore Center of a Man's Actions, Himselfe." For all their chatter about war, of not belonging, and of 50's life in America, the principals have no fully convincing interests outside themselves and their own small, little world.
Stylistically, the novel is a mixed bag. The sentences, as one might expect, are generally well-wrought, and they're the basis of my 2 stars. But even here, there are difficulties. Greer seems to strain after pseudo-poetic effect, and on occasion tumbles into the laughable. He writes, "the moon was rising quickly and had found a flock of clouds hidden in the sky and touched them all into vertebrated streaks of light. Everywhere the stars struggled to show themselves." If there exists in contemporary writing a better example of the long discredited "pathetic fallacy," I'm unaware of it.
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