The Worst Thing I've Done: A Novel [Paperback]

Ursula Hegi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2, 2008

Friends since earliest childhood, Annie, Jake, and Mason have a special bond. When Annie's parents die on the same night that she and Mason get married, the three friends decide to raise Annie's infant sister, Opal, together. But their bonds of intimacy, already entangled, become dangerously close, on the line. One fateful night, the three friends goad one another into crossing that line with shocking consequences.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The troubles specific to triangular relationships are explored with depth and substance in Hegi's complex and affecting latest. Annie, Jake and Mason—friends practically from the womb—have developed a fraught dynamic sharply affected by competitiveness, attraction and jealousy. The book's opening trauma—Mason's suicide—serves as a springboard for Hegi to delve into the friends' tangled past: Mason and Annie get married the same night Annie's father and very pregnant mother die in a car wreck. The baby, Opal, survives, and the three friends raise her. But festering attractions—Mason to Jake; Jake to Annie—lead Mason to cross a line, Annie to want out of the marriage and Jake to fail to act at a pivotal moment. Woven into the mix is the post-WWII story of Annie's immigrant mother, Lotte, and her friend Mechthild, who came to America from Germany to work as au pairs and pretended to be Dutch to avoid persecution. Though a bumper crop of tragedy weighs heavily on this controlled and articulate novel, Hegi (Sacred Time) is an accomplished storyteller; she inhabits different characters and blends the past with the present to tell a rich story of love, death, loyalty and survival. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Annie is addicted to talk radio, especially the dueling doctors who dispense psychological advice to the desperate. It makes her feel better about her own depressing circumstances, as she seeks to understand just how the special childhood friendship between herself, charismatic Mason, and steadfast Jake went so tragically wrong. When Annie's parents died on the day she married Mason, the three friends agreed to raise Annie's infant sister. But all their youthful optimism slowly begins to pall when the dynamics of their triangular relationship shift in disturbing directions. Emotionally needy Mason becomes increasingly agitated over the time Annie spends on her art and eventually becomes jealous of Annie and Jake's relationship. Engaging in a vicious form of emotional blackmail, Mason ultimately goads the two into acting on their mutual attraction, thus destroying the very thing he's trying so desperately to hang onto and leaving Annie and Jake to deal with the aftermath. But in doing so, Annie comes to realize that, as difficult as it is, facing "the worst thing I've ever done" brings much-needed emotional clarity. Hegi, author of the Oprah Book Club selection Stones from the River (1994), immediately hooks readers with the dramatic emotional arc of her story. Told from five points of view, and puncuated by Mason's running commentary, this ambitious novel fearlessly explores both the highs and lows of pushing emotional boundaries. Wilkinson, Joanne --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; Reprint edition (September 2, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416543767
• ISBN-13: 978-1416543763
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #451,539 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Off-putting soap opera quality, December 7, 2007

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Worst Thing I've Done: A Novel (Hardcover)

Annie drives at night, eating junk food and listening to talk radio psychologists. It's no wonder, as her husband Mason has recently hung himself in her studio. Nor is this the first wrenching disaster Annie has had to deal with. On her wedding day eight years ago, her father and her pregnant mother both died in a car crash, leaving her and Mason to raise Annie's baby sister Opal. But the young couple, who have known each other all their lives, rises valiantly and successfully to the occasion. Mason in particular is able to enter into a child's world and jolly the fiery Opal out of her impetuous tantrums. But now Mason is gone, and Annie is left with Opal and her guilt over Mason's death.

The third party to the adult triangle is Jake, who was always there --- the steady one, Mason's best friend since childhood, hopelessly in love with Annie. Add a dose of compulsive jealousy on Mason's part and a late night in a sauna, and you have the ingredients for the causal tragedy --- the worst thing they've done? --- that sets the scene for the novel.

Since we know so much so early, the only tension the novel provides is how Annie and Opal will muddle through the pain (and in Annie's case, the guilt) of losing Mason. Ursula Hegi teases the reader with snippets of Mason's long suicide note (presented in a different typeset) in between the chapters of the other characters' points of view. And we hear from them all --- Annie, Opal, Aunt Stormy, a friend of Annie's mother with whom they are staying, and eventually Jake. Annie is a collage artist, and the book itself is put together like a collage, with layers of each character for materials. The descriptions of Long Island and Aunt Stormy's modest old house are lyrical and beautifully done. The sea, the plants and the wildlife all seem to be characters in the book, and they provide a welcome relief to the maudlin goings-on of the humans.

I confess to losing interest in the characters --- Opal, frankly, is a spoiled brat --- and much of the plot (for instance, the fatal parental accident on the day of their wedding) was hard for me to swallow. The liberties Hegi takes with points of view distracted me. Opal rarely sounds like an eight-year-old in her sections, and she relates scenes that happened when she was a baby as if she has total recall of them (did Annie really tell her the exact moment that Opal leaned back into Annie and Annie scratched her head?). Aunt Stormy, the wise and good earth-mother type, takes Annie along to protests against Bush and the Iraq War. I share their political views, but their presence in the book seems forced. At one point the kind Aunt Stormy gently straightens out a new protester who has brought a peace sign that looks like the Mercedes logo. Right.

At least Pete, Aunt Stormy's great love who lives next door in his own house but sleeps in her bed, does not inflict his point of view. Fortunate because, due to a recent stroke, he talks like this: "Yes, but...I only find...things...I've stopped looking...for." As a matter of fact, the punctuation gods have been extraordinarily generous with this book, which swims with ellipses, italics, different typesets and our good friend --- the dash.

Through it all Annie stubbornly refuses to see Jake or allow Opal to see him. After a couple of months, though, she acquiesces. Will she accept this kind, steady man already so implicated in her life and sad story? Will the salubrious effects of time and seashore and radio psychologists and art and patience grant Annie and Opal some peace? What, after all, is the worst thing Annie or Mason or Jake has done? If, like me, you loved STONES FROM THE RIVER, you may be put off by the soap opera quality of Hegi's latest effort.

--- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful read!, October 25, 2007

By 

James A. Bowen Jr. "Jamie" (Summerville, SC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Worst Thing I've Done: A Novel (Hardcover)

I read about Ursula Hegi's newest novel in the San Francisco Chronicle, where they gave a great review. I found The Worst Thing I've Done to be remarkable. Her novel is very much like a collage - each character, their actions, the descriptions of the surroundings, filters through like the pieces of bright paper in Annie's collages to reveal a poignant, unforgettable story. The multiple points of view add dimension and kept my interest longer than the same story told chronologically from one point of view would have. Mason's voice pulsing in and out made him seem more accessible and gave me greater insight into his last moments before he committed suicide.

This story is nothing like Stones from the River or Floating in my Mother's Palms, but it shows Hegi's maturity as a writer to write beautifully and deeply about different time periods, to be able to create different frameworks for each story, and her dedication to the uncomfortable situations that most of us would turn away from. I urge anyone who might read this to go buy a copy!

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Love the writer, but the book wasn't authentic, December 7, 2007

By 

readernyc "readernyc" (New York City, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Worst Thing I've Done: A Novel (Hardcover)

Ursula Hegi's "THE WORST THING I'VE DONE" is not a story that I felt she, the author, ever really entered. It was plotted and she wrote it and she should have given in more time and more attention. Because Hegi is a great writer. So maybe she felt pushed to get this one out. The truth is that when I read any book I live in the language and the story for days afterwards.

And in doing so with this book, I FELT FALSE TO MYSELF INSIDE HER PROSE AND HER STYLE here. That for me, is the acid test. This in no way means that her other books are not wonderful; they are. But once this falsely told tale unfolds, it's third rate and sad to say that.