Vivian, the wife of Edward and mother of teenager Charlotte, has her finger on the pulse of Wooster due to listening in on conversations in her capacity as a telephone operator. Petty jealousies with her older sister Vera and classmate Betty Miller create seemingly huge tensions, which are really nothing compared to the news that Vivian accidentally overhears one evening on her shift at work.
The problem with secrets is that they not only expose a truth about someone else, but they also color your own presumptions about who you are. After Vivian discovers the secret about her own family, it sets into motion her own clandestine path to get to the bottom of things. Berg does this really well in her novel, and she shows an organic growth in her character that is not only believable but heart-warming.
In one amusing scene, set over a series of pages, the reader is introduced to the character of Vivian before her transformation. Here, Vivian takes great exception to Charlotte’s reading of The Myth of Sisyphus for her English class…so much so that it sets Vivian on a tirade with Charlotte (“‘YOU WILL NOT BRING PORNOGRAPHY INTO THIS HOUSE!’”) and a visit to school.
Charlotte had been stupefied by her mother’s deranged outburst and it had taken her several minutes to understand the cognitive disconnect. Her mother had been so enraged that Charlotte couldn’t explain the mistake to her, and had just gone up to her room with the remaining shreds of the book. She had then been flooded with dread, imagining her mother taking her Rage, with a capital R, to the high school, stomping in with hair and eyes wild, pocketbook swinging like a weapon, demanding to speak to the filth-monster who gave her daughter pornography.
Charlotte had had to wait until the next morning at breakfast, when her mother was calmly drinking her coffee, to explain that Sisyphus was a Greek king and not a venereal disease.
I started reading the novel and thought that it was going to be one long mid-western riff on Heehaw, but it is a lovely, folksy slice of life with revelations that keep the pages turning. The author has a knack for describing social situations in entertaining and authentic ways, while providing perspectives from several points of views. Vivian, who is so young and simple in the beginning (since we see her as a high-schooler and newly married woman), evolves believably from a closed-minded person to a woman who discovers how to discern what is right for her life.
Places like Beulah Bechtel’s Dress Shop, the Friedlander department store and other Wooster sites were still a big part of Wooster life when I was a college student in the mid-70s, and they are authentic but richly enough described for readers who have never been there. Nods to 1950s pop culture, the working of the telephone office, the hilarious dialogue, and the use of details that were inspired by family stories (with recipes that contain misspellings and wonderful asides) and articles in the Wooster newspaper, all add up to a new author not to miss.
Keep this on your “to read” pile—it comes out on March 10. Thanks to Edelweiss and HarperCollins for an advance copy.
