The Post-Birthday World

I loved Lionel Shriver's The Post-Birthday World. I read it on a visit home to see my mom and it was completely absorbing; I was drawn into the characters' world totally. On the other hand, I recently tried to read Shriver's previous book, We Have to Talk About Kevin, and while I admired its rigor and quality of writing, it was just too intense for me. I had to abandon it. Here's my review from the Oregonian.

2 men, 1 woman split in 2

Sunday, March 25, 2007

MIRIAM WOLF

I rina, the heroine of Lionel Shriver's new novel, "The Post-Birthday World," is happy with her life. A children's book illustrator, she lives in London with her longtime boyfriend, a think-tank researcher. Their relationship is steady, boring and utterly comfortable. Irina cooks gourmet meals and waits for Lawrence to come home. Each night they eat a big bowl of popcorn while they watch TV: "Preparing their traditional pre-dinner popcorn, Irina was thankful for another routine of perfectly balanced variation within sameness."

And if Lawrence sometimes takes her for granted or subtly belittles her in public, and their sex life is smothering in its sameness and lack of intimacy, that's a small price to pay for contentment, isn't it?

Into this cocoon of domestic bliss walks Ramsey Acton, Britain's aging, flashy king of snooker. The husband of a children's book writer Irina collaborates with, Ramsey has, in the few times the four have gone out to dinner over the years (an accidental tradition, always on Ramsey's birthday), always made Irina feel nervous, giggly -- and sexy.

One year, however, things are different. Ramsey and his wife have divorced, and Lawrence is on a fact-finding mission in Sarajevo. Against her better judgment, Irina allows Ramsey to take her out anyway. In what feels more like a date than a companionable dinner, the two feast on pristine sushi, drink too much and partake in intimate conversation. When she realizes she's about to kiss Ramsey, she knows she stands on the brink of "the most consequential crossroads of her life."

The results of that moment are so shattering that they cause the very narrative of the book to split in two. And for the rest of the 528-plus pages, Irina's story is told in alternating chapters, each of which holds an alternate reality. In one, she has kissed Ramsey Acton and thrown her old life to the winds. In the other, she has not.

In the hands of a lesser writer, this technique would cry out "gimmick," but Shriver, who won Britain's prestigious Orange Prize for her last novel, "We Have to Talk About Kevin," does more than just pull it off. With a gimlet eye for detail, emotion and irony, Shriver turns a trope into a triumph.

With Ramsey, Irina has traded security for passion. As she's dragged around the world on snooker junkets, she has to fight to hold onto a sense of herself as anything more than a "snooker wife." Meanwhile, the Irina who stays behind takes ever-increasing pleasure in her domesticity, even as Lawrence begins spending less and less time in the cozy home she has created for them.

The chapters overlap and intertwine in interesting ways. A Christmas trip to Irina's mother's home in Brighton Beach turns out very differently depending on who is accompanying Irina. Both Irinas decide to write a children's book. The book written by Ramsey's wife is full of passion and color. About a boy who loves snooker, it doesn't sell well, but wins a prestigious children's literature prize. The book Irina writes under Lawrence's influence is a computer-drawn story that makes pots of money. Its moral is "Between betraying and being betrayed, the anguish may be a toss-up."

How often do we get to see "what might have been" in our own lives? With "The Post-Birthday World," Shriver gives us a satisfying window into the trade-offs and trials of two main characters in one.

Shriver reads from "The Post-Birthday World" at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Powell's City of Books, 1005 W. Burnside St.

Miriam Wolf is the managing editor of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture.

When Will We Get There

Here's a review of a compellingly dark novel about a community of Eastern European expatriates in a dying mining town in Pennslyvania. It ran in the S.F. Chronicle. Click the title to go to the review at the Chron, or just hang out here and read it below:

Past weighs heavily on boy in a dying mining town

Reviewed by Miriam Wolf

When We Get There

By Shauna Seliy

BLOOMSBURY; 259 PAGES; $23.95

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Winter has never seemed more barren, gray and without hope than in Shauna Seliy's new novel, "When We Get There."

It's 1974, and the coal mining town of Banning, Pa., is struggling. The mines are closing one by one, and the close-knit population of Croat, Hungarian, Russian and other Eastern European immigrants is feeling the stresses and uncertainty of change in the winds.

Lucas Lessar is feeling more stressed than most. When the novel opens, it's Christmas Eve, and 13-year-old Lucas is in the bosom of his extended family -- his great-grandfather, the patriarch of the family; Slats, his grandmother, who works at "the Plate Glass"; and his gaggle of rowdy great-uncles and great-aunts. (They drink shots of whiskey and "feed each other moonshine cherries.") It's a poignant evening for Lucas. His father was killed in a mine explosion several years ago, and his mother mysteriously disappeared only a couple of months ago.

The family's celebration is interrupted by the appearance of Zoli. A co-worker of Slats' down at the Plate Glass, Zoli is deeply in love with Lucas' mother. (Of course, everyone is in love with Mirjana, she's the most beautiful and vibrant thing in the fading town -- or she was until her disappearance). Zoli's love for Mirjana runs so deep it has unhinged him. He attacks Lucas, trying to choke him into telling where his mother is. Slats' brothers pry him off, but he comes back later with a can of gas. When he sets fire to Great-Grandfather's beloved pear tree, he sows the seeds of the family's near destruction.

Loss dogs Lucas and his family. His great-grandfather falls ill, and the farm animals wander away. Lucas, a good student, stops going to school and haunts the town, looking for his mother and revisiting both his own history and the family history his relatives have passed down to him. He explores the woods and the abandoned mine buildings, one day finding a batch of carbide tins that miners used to fuel their lanterns. They make a satisfying explosion if you know how to rig them:

"My mother could hear that sound every time, no matter where she was. She would know what it was, and a lot of times she would know it was me, and she'd come running. If I made a lot of noise out of it, I was asking for trouble."

He does make a lot of noise out of it, blowing up can after can, until the town's dogs are all howling and his best friend's father (and another admirer of Mirjana), Marko Markovic, comes to find him: "I already have a headache like someone put a knife in my head, and then you are making so much goddamn noise."

Aside from noise control, Marko has another role to play -- one that shields Lucas from the surprising violence that erupts in this novel and fulfills Slats' prophesy that the Markovics always come to the aid of the Lessars.

"When We Get There" is a novel all about mood. There is a sadness running through the book, uniting all the characters, even when they are having an evening out at the Croatian Club. Seliy is wonderful at creating lingering images, such as her description of Great-Grandfather's pear tree, its fruit growing inside bottles fitted to the blossoms, the otherworldly quality of the pear brandy that fills the bottles. Or her meditation on Slats' post-work ablutions, a metaphor for the woman's strength and the toll her life takes on her body:

"Slats came home from the Plate Glass, stopped up the sink in the bathroom, and soaked her hands. She cursed the whole time. She cleaned her cuts every day so they wouldn't get infected. Most of them were small, invisible from a few feet away, and she painted them over with iodine. The white basin had a pink glow from all the years of her rinsing her hands and spilling the iodine."

Eventually, spring does come to Banning, bringing with it hope, and maybe even a little redemption. The seasons are like that, even for a boy whose family history seems so much stronger and more real than his own future.

Miriam Wolf is the managing editor of Bitch magazine.