My review of "Trouble" by Kate Christensen was in Sunday's New York Times. It's a tough thing, I think, to critique another author, especially when your review isn't particularly favorable, but then again review, discussion, scrutiny--it's all a part of writing, reading and loving books. I encourage everyone to read 'Trouble' Tell me what you think of it.
Here's the review...
Misery Loves Company
By KAUI HART HEMMINGS
Published: July 3, 2009
Writers love trouble. The mess of life is their sustenance. Conflict, discord, snags and hitches are the tools of suspense, hooking and then dragging readers through the currents and silt of narratives. Good for Kate Christensen, then, who has given her characters enough trouble to fill a book — in this case, “Trouble,” a terse and tough little novel about two friends in their 40s: Josie, a Manhattan therapist resolved to end her lackluster marriage, and Raquel, a Los Angeles rock star and former heroin addict whose fame is rapidly dwindling.
We first see Josie at a party in a friend’s Upper West Side apartment, flirting with a man she has just met. Christensen doesn’t bother with the formalities of introductions, explanations or back stories; instead, she plops us in the center of the action. This authorial abandonment is thrilling, the scene inclusive, charged and immediately propulsive. While Josie is flirting, she sees her reflection in a mirror across the room and suddenly realizes that her marriage is over. “My heart stopped beating. I almost heard it squeak as it constricted with fear, and then it resumed its steady rhythm and life went on, as it usually does.”
Except that for Josie it doesn’t, not as usual. Because after this momentous glance at herself, Josie drastically changes the rhythm of her life — not only by acknowledging the end of her marriage, but by stopping at a bar on her way home and leaving with a stranger for a brief, steamy encounter: “I crawled down his body and unzipped his jeans,” she says, and it goes on from there. Josie then continues home, where she tells her husband and 13-year-old daughter that she wants a separation and will be moving out. Meanwhile, she learns that her famous friend, Raquel — “as tiny and fragile, but also as tough, as a wicker basket” — is involved in a scandal with an actor half her age and is being maligned by a feisty celebrity blogger. Raquel persuades Josie to flee with her to Mexico City, where they can get away from it all while rediscovering themselves and their passions. “We’ll drink tequila and go dancing and breathe pollution,” Raquel says. “And eat chorizo tacos. . . . We’ll be Thelmita and Luisa!”
In the first part of this three-part book, there is enough mess to power a flight, and the reader prepares for a transformative passage into a new world. We brace ourselves for unforgettable characters like the ones Christensen created in her much lauded novels “The Epicure’s Lament” and “The Great Man.” With the groundwork she lays — ruined mar riages, bruised careers, dismantled women searching for repair and a little romance — a physical and emotional crossing seems inevitable, with trouble surely along for the ride. But no. Not so much...In fact, from the beginning things are remarkably smooth. Josie’s family reacts to her desertion with succinct and civilized aplomb. Here’s her daughter: “Um, Mom? . . . You don’t have to do the whole shrink thing. I know it’s not my fault. How could it be? It’s your marriage, and I’m just a kid.” And her husband: “I’ll help you in any way I can, of course. But I suppose you’ve figured it all out already, down to the last stick of furniture. . . . I always loved that expression, ‘stick of furniture.’ So Victorian.” He is then treated to hand-holding, light banter and a few last hurrahs in bed, enabling Josie, before takeoff, to leave most of her baggage behind.
The second part of the novel is set in a vibrant Mexico City, where Josie and Raquel reunite and take turns voicing their woes. Josie complains about her marriage: “He just completely let me go.” Raquel complains about her split with the actor: “My heart is broken now, along with everything else. That kid. He has everyone in the world rooting for him, and I’m the evil seductress. They’re all so hard on women in Hollywood.” Slight variations on these two tunes repeat while Christensen presents a lengthy montage of the women visiting museums, cathedrals and galleries; eating chorizo tacos; drinking tequila and mescal; listening to local music; and having conversations with the locals about Mexican art, politics and corruption.
While I didn’t expect a Ridley Scott adventure tale here, I suppose I didn’t foresee such ease and emotional levelness, or such a profusion of sightseeing. Through it all, meanwhile, Josie cultivates her newfound sexual appetite like a horny teen ager. When she and Raquel befriend a one-armed local artist named David, a “flash of attraction” strikes Josie out of nowhere. Then she meets Felipe. “Was I attracted to him? I wondered. I wasn’t in the habit of being attracted to men anymore. With an electric tingle, I was aware of long-unused nerves and neurons shaking themselves awake, wide-awake, zingingly awake.” This from a married woman who longed to pleasure someone she met at a party, did pleasure someone she met at a bar, treated her husband to a round of break-up sex, and was instantly attracted to David and Felipe. She claims her dalliance with Felipe is “so unlike me, so not married and not professional and not mature and not sober,” yet her actions make it difficult to credit this psychological and sexual awakening. Josie is so awake from the onset that she would make Kate Chopin proud. Indeed, there are moments when Josie is strikingly similar to Edna Pontellier, the heroine of Chopin’s “Awakening” — as when she states that she’s “going toward life, away from numbed stasis and paralyzed discontent.” But Edna’s discontent was painstakingly drawn, her obstacles complex and riveting, and the consequences of her choices profound and derailing.
There aren’t any obstacles in “Trouble.” I suppose the main line of suspense is whether Josie will form a relationship with Felipe, and whether her rapture will blind her to her friend’s possible relapse. Blink and you’ll miss Raquel’s downward spiral. Josie certainly does. Yet despite some cursory devastation, things more or less work out in the end.
Readers love trouble, too, and “Trouble” doesn’t have enough of it. The best part of this novel comes early on, when Josie is treating various patients while ruminating over her own problems. This is before she talks with her husband and before she knows what she’s going to do with her life. The writing at this point is sharp, clear and often hilarious. Christensen sweeps us through a cast of perfectly delineated neurotic patients in treatment with their distracted, hung-over and anxious therapist. Josie’s adventure with Raquel lacks these interactions with characters who bring out the conflicted protagonist in ways no exotic city ever could. And while at times the women’s friendship is illuminated by Mexico City, all sense of urgency disappears once they are there. Over the border, the tension of the novel is forsaken, and it becomes little more than a travelogue, reducing particular lives to anonymous dots. For a writer, that’s real trouble.
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