Ann Hood lives in
Providence, Rhode Island. She is the author of eight novels, two memoirs,
including Comfort: A
Journey Through Grief, which was a New York Times' Editors' Choice
and named one of the top ten non-fiction books of 2008; and a collection of
short stories, An
Ornithologist's Guide to Life. She is a regular columnist for
the New York Times,
her stories and essays have also appeared in The
Paris Review, Tin
House, The
Atlantic Monthly, and many other publications. She has won
two Pushcart Prizes, a Best American Spiritual Writing award, a Best Food
Writing award, and The Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction.
The novel opens on
the day in 1961 when John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as president. Claire is a young wife and mother, and she is
struggling with her loveless marriage. She
is married to Peter, who works at the Pentagon.
Claire has had an affair, and may be carrying her lover’s child. Vivien Lowe, an obituary writer in San
Francisco in 1919, searches for her lover, who disappeared in the Earthquake of
1906. These women have a surprising
connection.
The book alternates
chapters between Claire and Vivien, and Ann Hood kept me entranced wondering
about that connection not apparent until the final pages.
Claire seems a
character out of the TV series, Mad Men. She smokes and drinks with abandon, even when
she knows she is pregnant. Those were
certainly different times. Hood writes,
“If Claire had to look back and decide why she had the affair in the first
place, she would point to the missing boy.
This was in mid-June, during those first humid days when the air in
Virginia hangs thick. School was coming
to an end, and from her kitchen window Claire could see the bus stop at the
corner and the neighborhood children […] Their school bags dragged along the
sidewalk; their catcher’s mitts drooped.
Jump ropes trailed behind a small group of girls, as if even they were
too hot. // […] Claire smiled. Her hands
in the yellow rubber gloves dipped into the soapy dishwater as if on
automatic. Wash. Rinse.
Set in the drainer to dry.
Repeat. The kitchen smelled of
the chocolate cake cooling on the sill in front of her. And faintly of her cigarette smoke, and the
onions she’d fried and added to the meatloaf.
Upstairs, Kathy napped, clutching her favorite stuffed animal, Mimi, a
worn and frayed rabbit.” (13)
 |
| Ann Hood when I met her |
Vivien on the other hand,
is single and writes obituaries for friends and neighbors. Hood writes, “The obituary writer, Vivien Lowe,
usually did not know her clients. [… But]
They were all very much like Mrs. Marjorie Benton, who sat across from her on the
small deep purple loveseat. It was a rainy
March afternoon in the town of Napa, California, in 1919. […] The office looked
like a sitting room, with its Victorian furniture salvaged from the old apartment
in San Francisco, the loveseat and chairs and ornate, beaded lamps. The obituary writer lived above her office, in
one large room that looked down on Napa’s main street. […] Even though did not know it, Vivien knew that
grieving people needed food and something to quench their thirst. So she always put out a small plate of cheese and
crackers, or cookies, or fruit. She always
offered her clients a drink. Cool water,
hot tea, even a glass of wine” (28-29).
An amusing chapter
about midway, recounts a woman’s duty to her husband. I remember those days, the Kennedy
inauguration, stay-at-home moms were the norm, my mother washing dishes in the sink. Ann Hood, in The Obituary Writer, paints a vivid portrait of those times, and I am
glad I have reconnected with her work. 5
stars
--Chiron, 6/2/14
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