Family Happiness

I admire Laurie Colwin's writing very much. She's got a terrific style and I enjoy the character studies that she sketches. In this novel, Polly Demarest is a dutiful wife, mother, and daughter who tolerates her husband's workaholic habits and her opinionated mother's incessant demands that Polly always be ready to cook, host, and otherwise provide for family occasions. Polly's two brothers and father are also very idiosyncratic and well drawn. Colwin is excellent at skewering the foibles and excesses of each one.

Watching Polly come to the realization that the rest of the family isn't seeing who she is other than the wife-mother-daughter always happy to serve others is interesting and relatable. (She does have an editorial job in the education field that no one seems interested in.) Many women struggle to carve their independent identities outside those roles and tire of being just a support person for everyone around her. In this case, Polly is swept up into an affair with an artist, and the complications and conflict in her life naturally grow.

I was disappointed in the book because I found Polly's ultimate resolution to her conflict to be selfish, immoral, and not even true to the core essence Colwin established for her. Readers are meant to cheer for her because she has found a way to "have her cake and eat it too," and perhaps Colwin couldn't think of another way to conclude the story that wouldn't feel trite or expected. However, I suspect that a real Polly would find something essential in herself had been lost given her choice. And I just can't cheer for a character--male or female--who makes such damaging choices.

Another disappointment was that one of the Polly's friends spoke almost exactly like another character in "A Big Storm Knocked It Over." Both were quick with a sarcastic retort, often funny, but without a seeming softer side.