Letter to a dead wife
David Montrose
AMONG THE DEAD by Michael Tolkin Faber, £14.99, pp. 229 The night before everything changed, Frank Gale wrote a letter to his wife.' So, portentously, begins Michael Tolkin's second novel. In the letter, Frank — a prosperous Angeleno — confesses an affair he will have ended by the time Anna reads about it, which will be after the couple arrives in Acapulco, with their infant daughter, for a 'healing' vacation. Tempering repentance with calculation, Frank has already rehearsed her possible reactions, pondered counter-reactions. The future which ensues is entirely unexpected.
Setting the narrative rolling involves some fairly implausible conduct. The after- noon Frank is to fly out with his family, he meets his mistress for lunch — to tell her it's over — at an hour which makes it touch and go whether he will later reach the air- port in time. Nevertheless, he dawdles at the restaurant. Most unlikely; but Frank has to miss that flight, just as his wife and daughter have to go on ahead. They, and everybody else aboard, must die when the plane all-too-plausibly crashes; he must be left with grief and guilt. Unlikely, too, that Frank would have put the letter where Anna might chance across it (exactly what happens). But she must die aware of his unfaithfulness and without forgiving him. Unlikely that, in the letter, Frank would identify his mistress when Anna did not know her. But the letter must be discov- ered in the wreckage and hyped as a human interest story by the newspapers; without the name, the adulterous pair would not eventually be exposed.
Once established, however, these jeopardy-promoting elements—tell-tale let- ter, secret flame — are generally spurned. Suspense is not Tolkin's metier. For all that his previous novel, The Player, revolved around a murder investigation, its main strength came from guying Hollywood's byzantine etiquette (largely untranslated to Robert Altman's film). In Among the Dead, the letter's survival is not revealed until two-thirds through, whereupon Frank immediately recognises that nothing can prevent the dirt emerging; how soon is the only doubt. Tolkin creates little sense of the inevitable closing in and, when the blow does fall, the novel ends before Frank suf- fers the full dazzle of media notoriety.
Among the Dead is primarily, and often brilliantly, a tragic-comedy of manners and a psychological study. For comfort, Frank turns to his brother and their parents, and Tolkin acutely depicts how familial strains persist even at such times. At first indul- gent towards Frank's erratic behaviour, they grow impatient when he fails to regain equilibrium, especially once hearse-chasing attorneys descend and serious thinking is required about which lawsuit to join. By contrast, the airline's PR operators unceas- ingly ooze solicitude (to the bereaveds' faces at least). The wayward currents of Frank's mind are charted persuasively: lurid fantasies, futile speculations on what might have been, a compulsion to visit the crash site (only to be arrested as a suspect- ed looter), feelings that his tragedy has been debased when a grudge-bearing clerk proves to have caused the disaster:
If a Palestinian had blown the plane out of the sky, Frank could . . . tell the world that his life had been touched by the terrible events of this century. . . Where was the glamour in the fatal radiation from the decaying misery of a DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE?
At one point, reviewing his situation, he distractedly wonders: 'Could anyone buy this as a movie? Or is it too internal?' Well, maybe the novel is too internal, but it is still an accomplished effort. And yes, Frank, they could do it as a movie, only I reckon they'll first want to beef up those elements Tolkin chooses to underplay.
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