Where were you when you heard the news of the planes crashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Center? I was at work, trying to squeeze a month’s worth of tasks from my to-do list into the remaining forty-eight hours before I left for a three-week holiday. One of my colleagues had heard the news on the radio during a ten-minute break between clients, but it didn’t make much of an impression on me until I got home and saw the footage on TV. So it wasn’t my story. Another of my colleagues was bound for a conference in New York, on a plane that got diverted to Canada. He came back with a tale to tell about the kindness of strangers, of sleeping like a refugee in a sports hall, and missing out on what might have been his only opportunity to attend a conference abroad. His story was bigger than mine, but still not much of a 9/11 survival story. In Richard Bausch’s Before, During, After, Michael Faulk is waking up with a hangover in a hotel in New York, deciding against breakfasting at the top of the towers before attending his cousin’s wedding. His fiancée, Natasha Barrett, is on a Jamaican beach holiday with one of her friends, frantically trying to find out if Michael is alive. This is their story.
The couple met only a few months earlier at a fundraising dinner hosted by Natasha’s employer, US Senator for Mississippi. She was tired of her job, and grieving for the loss of her relationship with a man who continually promised, but ultimately failed, to leave his wife. Sixteen years older, Michael is on the brink of leaving the priesthood. Somehow they click, and cancel their other plans in order to spend the coming week together, by the end of which they’ve agreed to marry soon after Natasha’s return from Jamaica.
When disaster strikes, Michael joins the disorientated throng queueing for the non-functioning phone lines, as well as for trains out of the city, conscious only of his own needs and the needs of those he loves (p86):
he thought of how he had failed to be of help to anyone – how … his one concern had been getting away from the city. He had spent most of his adult life performing the very tasks that were called for in this situation, yet he had only reacted, a numb, fearful refugee, like all the others, trying to get out.
Meanwhile Natasha, along with countless other American tourists, is stranded in paradise, pouring alcohol down her throat in a vain attempt to manage the uncertainty, the terror of not knowing whether her partner is alive or dead (p87):
She went out onto the veranda, aware of herself now as being drunk, feeling nothing good in it, no release of tension or anxiety, but only the amplification of her fear, the need to hold on to it – as if to let it go would be to tempt God: it would be when she relaxed into the belief that Faulk was safe that she could discover something awful had happened.
Yet, when the pair are eventually reunited, their anxiety doesn’t abate. In fact, it escalates. Initially, Michael feels Natasha, constantly tearful, is overreacting; then, that she is keeping something from him. As, indeed, she is, but it’s not the betrayal of their relationship that he suspects, but a violation so dreadful she finds herself withdrawing from the only people who might help her and thereby jeopardising their future happiness.
I first came across Richard Bausch through his short stories; “What Feels like the World", about a man watching his granddaughter dutifully practising a skill she is unlikely ever to master, one of my all-time favourites. So, although I hadn’t read any of his twelve other novels before, I knew this would be a treat. Before, During, After is about faith, fear and the disturbing aftermath of trauma. Thanks to Atlantic Books for my review copy.
For a couple of other novels I’ve read recently in which the events of 9/11 play a part, see my reviews of Academy Street and Andrew’s Brain. Have you read any other fiction that features this and/or do you have any 9/11 stories of your own?
When disaster strikes, Michael joins the disorientated throng queueing for the non-functioning phone lines, as well as for trains out of the city, conscious only of his own needs and the needs of those he loves (p86):
he thought of how he had failed to be of help to anyone – how … his one concern had been getting away from the city. He had spent most of his adult life performing the very tasks that were called for in this situation, yet he had only reacted, a numb, fearful refugee, like all the others, trying to get out.
Meanwhile Natasha, along with countless other American tourists, is stranded in paradise, pouring alcohol down her throat in a vain attempt to manage the uncertainty, the terror of not knowing whether her partner is alive or dead (p87):
She went out onto the veranda, aware of herself now as being drunk, feeling nothing good in it, no release of tension or anxiety, but only the amplification of her fear, the need to hold on to it – as if to let it go would be to tempt God: it would be when she relaxed into the belief that Faulk was safe that she could discover something awful had happened.
Yet, when the pair are eventually reunited, their anxiety doesn’t abate. In fact, it escalates. Initially, Michael feels Natasha, constantly tearful, is overreacting; then, that she is keeping something from him. As, indeed, she is, but it’s not the betrayal of their relationship that he suspects, but a violation so dreadful she finds herself withdrawing from the only people who might help her and thereby jeopardising their future happiness.
I first came across Richard Bausch through his short stories; “What Feels like the World", about a man watching his granddaughter dutifully practising a skill she is unlikely ever to master, one of my all-time favourites. So, although I hadn’t read any of his twelve other novels before, I knew this would be a treat. Before, During, After is about faith, fear and the disturbing aftermath of trauma. Thanks to Atlantic Books for my review copy.
For a couple of other novels I’ve read recently in which the events of 9/11 play a part, see my reviews of Academy Street and Andrew’s Brain. Have you read any other fiction that features this and/or do you have any 9/11 stories of your own?
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