Say When, a review

When I read Open House two years ago, I loved Elizabeth Berg’s perfectly observed moments, revealing character and emotion obliquely but acutely. I reveled in so many moments as I read, nodding, saying “yes,” and “oh,” and “mmm.” It was like warming my hands in front of the fire after coming inside from a snowstorm. Lovely. So when I picked up her newest book, Say When, I was anticipating more of the same. Not the same story, of course, but that sense of wonder, the mundane made revelatory. Lovely but simple language. All that.

Sadly, I didn’t find much of that at all. It’s not that this is a bad book. It’s not. But it’s like eating a solid and unexciting, slightly chemical-tasting Hostess cupcake rather than the freshly made, light as air Angel Food Cake feel of the first book.

I’m not sure if it’s the subject matter: a woman says she wants a divorce. We see the entire thing from the husband’s POV. This may be problematic because his story isn’t all that interesting. Grief can be, certainly, but this is not a man who thinks deeply, at least not until late in the book. And where his mind goes – imagining them together, she and her new paramour, for example – it’s just not that fresh. And the way his wife explains the lack in their relationship, in him, as well as his own memories of their time together, well, a lot of it reads too generically.

I feel like Berg took the easy way out with a lot of this. The story is more internal than external, which is hard to pull off, because you damned well better make that internal life interesting and textured. And this wasn’t, not nearly enough. The best part of the book, to my mind, was a subplot about what it’s like to be a mall Santa. That felt original. That had life to it. Some of the rest did too, in spurts, but added up to not enough. The imagery also lacks the spark I expected. One of the best moments in the book is when he tosses his wedding ring into a field, a spur of the moment thing. And then immediately regrets it and goes scrabbling in the dark for it, only to come up empty handed. That I liked for the melodramatic gesture and the real pang that follows, that "oops, didn't mean to do that, can I take it back?" Other things stand out too, particularly secondary characters: a waitress, a restaurant owner, a fellow Santa. But not enough of the main character does. He’s a bit dull, poor fellow. And so the book is too.

Posted by Tamar at November 19, 2003 09:43 PM