The appeal of other people's awful families
Anita Brookner
THE OTHER SIDE he House of Atreus, which gets a couple of mentions in Mary Gordon's family saga, has nothing on the Macnamar- as, all world-class grumblers and haters, so comprehensively exhausting that it is diffi- cult to tell them apart. This is a great pity, since Mary Gordon is one of America's most competent practitioners of this genre, a. genre which has a genuine and long- lasting appeal for the reader. But lurking in the background of her novels and stories are ancient ghosts, religiouS phantoms whose message is entirely primitive and loveless, a Catholicism of small societies and conventicles, the members of which are beady-eyed watchers and incompe- tents, anxious to hand on their condemna- tion from generation to generation. Read- ers who can take this in their stride will welcome The Other Side as a particularly authentic example of theocratic doom. Others will shrink from what seems to be evidence of a backwardness no less deplor- able for being willingly embraced.
This is a family story, constructed around the deathbed of the matriarch, a device as potent as cheap music. Just why the family of Ellen Macnamara has re- mained loyal to her is puzzling, for at 90 Years of age she is as violent and as charmless as she has been all her life. Back in Ireland, we are told, she hated every- one: in America, the 'other side' of the title, she hated her employers, and, later °n, Once married to the saintly Vincent, she hated her daughters and granddaugh- ters.
No one can blame her for this last, almost routine manifestation of her feel- ings, for daughters Theresa and Mag- dalene, one an unfrocked nun who married an unfrocked priest, the other a drinker and hypochondriac who took to her bed some 20 years previously, are genuinely unlovable. Magdalene's daughter, Cam- ille, the supposed heroine of the story, cannot summon up the energy to leave her mother's house, although she has con- signed a discarded husband to the base- ment. Camille's lover, Ira Silverman, fails to convince her of 'her folly, but respects her anger. In feminist eyes female anger is seen as an heroic quality; without an acknowledgement of this fact the rela- tionships in The Other Side may strike the reader as examples of the higher lunacy. And since only women are allowed to be angry, the men, who put in a weak and perfunctory appearance, seem apologetic. Men like this are not worth leaving home for, but that, of course, is what makes the women so angry. It is one of the great dilemmas of our time.
Three generations, more or less indis- tinguishable, are gathered at Ellen's raging and foul-mouthed bedside, while her hus- band, Vincent, lies peacefully in a Catholic nursing home run by a nun who is herself quite handy with four-letter words, The question, is, will Vincent, now aged 88 and injured in a fall, wish to return to his spouse when he is so happy at Maryhurst? He will, of course, on the last page, although concerned readers will beg him to stay put. In between the breaking of Vincent's leg (page 1) and his noble resumption of his burden we are given a run-down of every failed rela- tionship in the Macnamara family, Guilt, fear, inadequacy, and, of course, anger, rule. This is as it should be and makes rather good reading: other people's awful families do tend, in fiction at least, to have a bracing effect.
Mary Gordon is a skilful novelist, and she has endowed her saga with enough solid structure to enable it to withstand easy criticism. But at the same time it is faintly, gothically, overblown and off- putting. The same stricture applies to her indulgence towards her characters: the fatal flaw lies in her inability to see how unpleasant they are. She has been defeated by an entirely honourable sentiment: mis- placed loyalty.
She has also been defeated by her style, which is orotund and superstitious. Exam- ple: 'She is lying in the bed, her dying in the center of the house. She feels she has become her death, the one event that they have made her'. What does this mean? A portentous style for a portentous subject, one might argue. Here again one sees the mournful anxiety which the author has lavished on her subject, and which, in itself, does her credit. That the novel remains at all readable is a tribute to the seriousness of the author's purpose. But her generosity, her very capacity, has overreached itself. Less would have been infinitely more.
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