The Widow's Children: A Novel [Paperback]

Paula Fox (Author), Andrea Barrett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 1999

"Chekhovian. . . . Every line of Fox's story, every gesture of her characters, is alive and surprising."—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

On the eve of their trip to Africa, Laura Maldonada Clapper and her husband, Desmond, sit in a New York City hotel room, drinking scotch-and-sodas and awaiting the arrival of three friends: Clara Hansen, Laura's timid, brow-beaten daughter from a previous marriage; Carlos, Laura's flamboyant and charming brother; and Peter Rice, a melancholy editor whom Laura hasn't seen for over a year. But what begins as a bon voyage party soon parlays into a bitter, claustrophobic clash of family resentment. From the hotel room to the tony restaurant to which the five embark, Laura presides over the escalating innuendo and hostility with imperial cruelty, for she is hiding the knowledge that her mother, the family matriarch, has died of a heart attack that morning. A novel as intense as it is unerringly observed, The Widow's Children is another revelation of the storyteller's art from the incomparable Paula Fox. "It is the most elegant exploration I have read of the chaos of modern life. . . . There is something marvelously honorable in Fox's work."—Edith Milton, The Nation "A splendid novel. . . . A work of marvelous design and subtle synchronization."—Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

First published in 1976, The Widow's Children, with its unpalatable family wistfully gnashing at one another, has long defied critical description. Now that it's been rereleased, with a fine new introduction by Andrea Barrett, it's time again for readers to approach this spare--yet unsparing--novel. Approach with something like terror, or at least a tremulous respect, for Paula Fox's tale of one family's massive, various history awes with its marvelous compression. We learn these people inside and out in just one evening. Divided into seven chapters ("Drinks," "Corridor," "Restaurant," "The Messenger," "Two Brothers," "Clara," "The Funeral"), the book tells of the Maldonadas, Spanish-Cuban immigrants to America who now find themselves middle-aged and living in the past, galvanized only by sister Laura's emotional excesses. "These people," notes Peter, a friend, "had not signed any social contract."

Laura leads her husband, Desmond, her brother, Carlos, her daughter, Clara, and Peter a not-so-merry dance through one acrimonious dinner in a pretentious Manhattan restaurant. Practically the only ugly truth she doesn't manage to dredge up is the one she learned that very afternoon: Alma, Carlos and Laura's mother, has died in a nursing home. But the plot is not what we think about when we say this is a very, very good novel. Fox's marvelous control and formalism ultimately give The Widow's Children its strange, singular power. She has a poet's ability not just to imply unsayable mysteries but to imbue the unsaid with treachery, wit, emotion, and irony, all hanging in a vaporous cloud. Each character in turns speaks a pained monologue; we don't like them--we don't, in a sense, even care--but we can't stop watching this elaborately choreographed car wreck.

Along the way, Fox gets off a number of good ones, as in this description of a neighbor: "a tall muscular man who entered into and departed from rooms quickly, athletically, as though following a secret program of body building." Her wit leavens our impatience with these difficult people. And that's a clever swindle, for she then delivers a chilling tale with infinite grace. This is in no way an expected novel. --Claire Dederer

Review

A splendid novel . . . . A work of marvelous design and subtle synchronization. -- Kirkus Reviews

Chekhovian . . . . Every line of Fox's story, every gesture of her characters, is alive and surprising. -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

It is the most elegant exploration I have read of the chaos of modern life. . . . There is something marvelously honorable in Fox's work. -- Edith Milton, The Nation

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (October 17, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393319636
• ISBN-13: 978-0393319637
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #518,444 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Dance of Death, January 22, 2005

By 

Christopher W. Coffman (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Widow's Children: A Novel (Paperback)

That was how the New York Times book reviewer characterized this novel in 1976 when it was first published, and "A Dance of Death" remains an insightful summary of both the plot and the atmosphere of Paula Fox's most autobiographical novel (the only one that comes close in this respect is THE WESTERN COAST).

Paula Fox has been quoted in an interview objecting to her novels being described as "depressing", but whether she likes it or not, her superbly realized works portray an extremely bleak universe. Like the work of the otherwise very different writer Isaac Babel (his collected Short Stories are available on Amazon.com), the world portrayed by Fox is one of distinctive aesthetic beauty, but it is also a terrible world that is indifferent to human suffering.

Readers of Paula Fox's memoir BORROWED FINERY discovered with shock how autobiographical Fox's novels are, particularly THE WESTERN COAST and THE WIDOW'S CHILDREN. BORROWED FINERY is, in effect, the Bible of Fox's life-a sparsely depicted, highly condensed version of the truth uncluttered by detail which would have been impossible for the author to actually recall, while her novels are Fox's Homeric ILIAD and ODYSSEY-richly detailed, splendidly evoked works of art that, while based on historical truth, are filled with sumptuous detail and splendid turns of phrase and are, first and foremost, aesthetic masterworks.

At the center of WIDOW'S CHILDREN is the dead widow's formidable daughter Laura Maldonado, who is the image of Paula Fox's real-life mother Elsie de Sola. Laura is a beautiful, cruel almost inhuman character in the mold of Clytemnestra and Medea, and like them she is a giver and a taker of life. Like Paula Fox's real mother, Laura Maldonado had four abortions until, the fifth time, she discovered her pregnancy a month too late and her daughter Clara was born. Clara is modeled on Paula Fox herself. The novel starts out as Greek tragedy but ends up being twisted into something else, something more superficially uplifting but, in the end, less complete.

As the novel opens, Laura has called a family gathering in Manhattan to celebrate Laura's departure for a trip to Africa with her second husband Desmond. Just before her brother Carlos, her daughter Clara and her old friend Peter Rice arrive at her hotel suite, Laura takes a phone call and learns that her aged mother, the widow of the title, has died in an old age home. Laura decides to conceal this knowledge from her husband and everyone else, and so the evening begins. Fox revealed in her memoir that much of THE WIDOW'S CHILDREN is based on actual events in her life, and it is clear that not being told about her grandmother's death was one of the great traumas in her life.

The relationship between truth and imagination produce a deeper truth. Most of THE WIDOW'S CHILDREN can be mapped directly onto the actual events depicted in BORROWED FINERY-Laura is Elsie, Peter Hansen is Paul Fox, Clara is Paula, Eugenio is Fermin and Carlos is Paula's favourite, and flamboyantly gay, uncle Leopoldo, etc. But the fundamental achievement of Fox in this novel is to imaginatively enter the mind and heart of her abusive, cruel and demonically attractive mother Elsie through the vividly evoked character Laura. It is a magnificent aesthetic achievement and it must have been a source of psychological healing for Paula Fox. This accounts for the mesmerizing, if repellent first 60% of the novel.

But then Paula Fox veers away from the deeply cruel and sad facts of her life and constructs a happier ending in which Clara successfully confronts her mother with the help of a character apparently modeled on the real life Elwood Corning, a kindly minister who intervened in the real Paula Fox's life when she was an abandoned young girl. As the novel veers in this happier direction and builds towards its climax, an eerie thing happens which does not appear to be part of the intentional effects executed by this very experienced and accomplished novelist.

In the early chapters of WIDOW'S CHILDREN, through a feat of sympathetic imagination (and considerable psychological courage), Fox re-created her terrible mother in the character of Laura. But the final chapters focus on Clara, who is based on Paula Fox herself, and her ally Peter Rice, a character based on her original rescuer Elwood Corning. But weirdly, just as Fox focuses the novel on this image of herself, the novel becomes superficial and vague and unconvincing. The ferocious dynamism of the novel's early chapters is lost. Paradoxically, the invented material about Fox's mother is more convincing than the material based on the author's own feelings and inner world! Laura is alive and unforgettable in a way that Clara, although she starts out that way, is not. A very strange result, and one which, unfortunately, undercuts the aesthetic achievement of THE WIDOW'S CHILDREN. It also raises the question of to what degree Paula Fox inherited, or began to absorb, her mother Elsie's character, abandoning the hapless innocence of Clara in WIDOW'S CHILDREN (and of the character Annie Gianfala in WESTERN COAST).

This novel is unusual and does not provide many of the traditional pleasures of literature, while others it lavishes in superabundance. Only certain readers will have a taste for it, but it is a remarkable book. It is perhaps fitting to conclude with another biographical note: Elsie is the great-grandmother, and Paula Fox, is the grandmother, of Courtney Love.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life, in 7 Chapters, 224 pages, April 24, 2000

By 

"copperphyle" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Widow's Children: A Novel (Paperback)

Something happened on the way from childhood -- from wanting only, like Peter Rice, "to be good," or wanting to be free, or loved, or loving, or safe, or rich, or wanted-- to the widow's funeral. Like the best stories do, this one happens in the hearts and minds of its readers, borne there by the exactness of vision, the precision of craft, the sense of the messenger ever-grappling with the message. Andrea Barrett's essay is a bonus, a sensitive and intelligent reader-response that concludes with the proper advice: "The novel is itself, wholly itself; there is no way to comprehend it except to read it."

7 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Prose, November 30, 1999

By 

Mrs. Norman Main (Bratenahl, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Widow's Children: A Novel (Paperback)

Paula Fox is an old-fashioned writer, that is, she choses every word with care; she creates characters that live on in the reader's mind, etched in the acid of recognition. Her characters are never cliched,because Fox writes them true. Their actions and emotions are not predictable because Fox writes them true. In an age of supersized novels of mall-like sameness, Paula Fox is unique. Her work can not be franchised.