On the heels of Dept. of Speculation, here we now have Indelicacy. I predicted, after the fact, that a whole slew of Offill imitators would flood the marketplace, around 2016. At first blush, over the first few pages, I thought this was part of that imagined slew, but it is not.
There is a big reveal in the acknowledgments of this book that I feel is not inappropriate to mention:
"Short passages from Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Genet's The Maids, and Octavia Butler's Kindred appear here, and I've named my characters after characters in those works, as well as Clarice Lispector's The Apple in the Dark. A passage also appears from Goya: The Witches and the Old Women Album." (159)
Elena Ferrante is not acknowledged perhaps because Cain has not directly lifted from her work in the same manner, but Indelicacy owes a greater debt to Ferrante than Offill. One might make this mistake because it is "minimalist," but it does not go as far as Offill. We do not learn the main character's name until almost the last chapter. But there are other proper names (rather than a letter like G. or B., or their occupation). It is not framed as a series of non-sequiturs, though there are a number of them. The story takes place in some sort of alternate world that is vague and shadowy, and the protagonist occasionally departs from the genteel tone of the novel by saying something (forgive me) indelicate. While attending a reading at a library by an author she likes, he disappoints her, as does another author interviewing him, by conducting an obsequious exchange, taking success for granted:
"When I walked out of the room, I said simply, 'You're both worms,' and they looked at me, not knowing how to respond to a statement like that. 'Of the worst kind. When you open your mouths, you are male worms eating from a toilet.'" (119-120)
Or another nonchalant aside:
"Before I had finished my soup, an older man came and sat near me. He wasn't eating; he appeared to be doing nothing at all. He looked at me, then looked again. Men looking at women like that are truly horrible. Especially when they are so much older, when they are nearly dead themselves." (28)
The plot is very simple and basic. A woman works as a cleaning lady at a museum. She makes friends with her co-worker, Antoinette, and they eventually become best friends. There is real love between them. The woman soon meets a man. Here is the story of how they met:
"It's strange my husband noticed me, but he came to the museum to see paintings of Caravaggio and then of Goya, and the third time I was mopping the floor of the coatroom when he came for his jacket and umbrella. We stood together near the coats for some time, talking, and then he walked me home.
'Aren't you embarrassed?' I asked, and he said he was never embarrassed by anything.
We were married at the start of the summer and hardly anyone attended--a few of his friends, a cousin from Brazil. No one I knew was there." (33)
The novel almost never identifies any specific people or places, except Brazil and Jamaica and the painters referenced here.
After getting married, the woman is able to quit her job at the museum, and focus full-time on her writing. She wants to be a writer. There are many ruminations on writing here. She doesn't know what to write about, except descriptions of paintings she admires. She becomes estranged from Antoinette after marriage, as she quits her job at the museum, and laments the loss. She develops an appreciation for dance and becomes a near-constant concert-goer. She takes ballet lessons and she meets Dana, who replaces Antoinette as her closest, dearest friend. There are shades of homo-eroticism in these friendships, and it is more pronounced with Dana. She gets drunk for the first time with Dana, and tells her husband about it, and he asks if she wants to get high with him for the first time, and so they smoke hashish. While there's nothing particularly anachronistic about this, it feels that way, perhaps to comment on the shifting tones of a patriarchal society. The woman is financially dependent on her husband. He is marrying "beneath him." It is almost old-fashioned with a modern sheen.
Eventually, Antoinette and the woman are reunited and resume their friendship. Antoinette has married, and loves her husband Frederick, though they are poor. She gets pregnant shortly after marriage. The woman has been married to her husband for three years. She does not love him, but she does love the life their marriage has made possible. She has never particularly wanted children, and she has never gotten pregnant, despite having sex without contraceptives. The woman and her husband also have a housekeeper, Solange, who becomes the other major figure in the novel.
While this book did not knock me out quite like Dept. of Speculation, and while I often picked it up with some measure of indifference, the more I think about it, the better it seems. Because it is the fantasy all would-be writers have: to marry someone rich so we don't have to work and can instead devote the rest of our lives to the pursuit of artistic beauty. It is the idea of heaven, to some. And though like heaven, it is a fantasy, unlike heaven it is in fact a reality for some, and there is certainly a dark side to absolute freedom, when it has been bestowed by another. And yet the husband is not a villain, even when he devolves into a rant that is one of the outstanding moments of novel:
"'Women, I know they're attuned to something, they're always tuned in, I guess. I've often felt that women were tuned in to things they have no business being tuned in to. But you can't stop it, can you? Not you. You encourage it, in fact! Don't do that!......I don't even like sex! But I do like comfort. Men told me. Why didn't I listen? And just who are you, anyway? Just what are you attuned to? I've only wanted to live a normal life, and with you that's impossible. Do you know what people say about you? Do you have any idea? They feel sorry for me! And now I know why...You're like an old piece of pie I can't throw away, a very good pie. But I rescued you. You know that! And yet, I'd never seen anyone so alluring. You're always turning away. Turn toward me. Haven't you ever felt yourself carried away? Toward a woman?...Look at me, you are my wife, first and foremost, and I will be loyal to you. Let's go away, I'll take you to Brazil after all. We'll walk up and down the avenues. I'll protect you and keep you close. I gave very dear things to you, many, many jewels. Everything you're wearing right now. You are a proper woman. No, you are not. Clothes can't make a woman proper. Do you know how hard I've tried?...I don't think you realize how hard I work--not once have you come to my office!'
That is where I stopped listening." (150-151)
This novel is a complicated, troubling examination of class and power in friendship and marriage. All of the characters are flawed (Antoinette and Dana, less so). At the same time, it is a deceptively simple story. It is inspirational in a similar way to Dept. of Speculation because it presents a different sort of way of writing a novel. You don't need to pepper your narrative with complex characters and an ingenious plot. You can keep it simple and speak your personal truth. You can simply ask yourself why you write, and you can follow that purpose to its logical end.
Grade: A-
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