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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

Married or single, something’s missing: First Love & All Grown Up

2/8/2017

8 Comments

 
Londoner Neve is married, New Yorker Andrea is single, but they’re both struggling with similar attachment issues. Both have tried and abandoned therapy, and not only because of complex relationships with their mothers. They’re both creative types, although Andrea has given up on her art. Two women in their thirties, I’d like to put them in a room together to see if that would emphasise their individual difficulties or they’d help each other out. Failing that, I’m relying on you to judge what they can tell us, either separately or together, about contemporary women’s lives.
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First Love by Gwendoline Riley

Neve is a writer in her mid-thirties, recently married to an older man. It’s not the age difference that triggers their painful arguments, nor even Edwyn’s ill-health, but their mutual difficulties with attachment: desperate for love while detesting the dependency their intimacy brings. While neither has previously lived with a partner, I don’t think it’s the “first love” between Neve and Edwyn to which the title of Gwendoline Riley’s fifth novel refers, but the love they failed to find in their formative relationships with their parents.
 
We don’t learn much about Edwyn’s childhood, but the narrator, Neve, analyses a lifetime of disappointments with both parents and previous lovers. Her
narcissistic mother is both neglectful and intrusive: after hosting her for a couple of nights in her Glasgow flat, Neve finds “that voice was still tripping about my mind. When I lay down to sleep I heard her yapping and thought I really would go mad.” Although her parents separated when Neve was four, she and her brother were forced to continue seeing their menacing father until their late teens. It’s clear her early childhood was blighted by her father’s violence – if not to her directly, then certainly indirectly when her mother was hit about the head when breastfeeding – and her mother’s fear, suffering panic attacks during pregnancy.
 
In a fragmented narrative moving back and forth across time (although very easy to follow), we learn that Neve’s kisses have been rejected at various points by her mother, her father and Edwyn too. Gentler with his fists, but nevertheless as much a bully as Neve’s own father, and like the husband in
When I Hit You, the misogynistic Edwyn pins the blame for all the problems in the marriage on Neve.
 
Self-reflective, with enough insight into her predicament to recognise the need to change, but not enough to achieve it, Neve presents as a prime candidate
for therapy. Although she suggests it at some point for her mother, whose hectic social life seems a defence against extreme loneliness, Neve abandoned hers after only seven months (she probably needs at least seven years) immediately before her marriage, as if she really believed Edwyn would be the solution to all her problems.
 
While the blurb refers to the “glittering humour”, I found this novel terribly sad. Yes, I suppose most of us can find moments of identification in a tale about a miserable marriage – don’t we all struggle with our failures to attain some mystical ideal? – but the only positive I could see was that the couple haven’t had children. That’s not to say I didn’t find this novel compelling; indeed, it’s always a delight to find such an astute depiction of
insecure attachment.
 
Thanks to Granta books for my review copy.

All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg

What constitutes a grown-up? Is it assessed by societal standards or is up to the individual themselves to decide? Is it about reaching certain
milestones of age or identity accessories or does it come with accepting life’s limitations and our own? That seems to be the subject of Jami Attenberg’s fifth novel about a New Yorker in her thirties without marriage, children or a successful career.
 
I say “seems” because, like life itself, there’s no plot to Andrea’s story. Indeed, the fragments of her life seemed laid down at random, not so much because of the irregular timeline but because we’re continually introduced to characters and episodes we’ve met before. Andrea is witty, self-deprecating, both insightful and deluded, although I didn’t find her as amusing as other reviewers seem to have done. I actually found her quite irritating as one of those wounded people who isn’t wounded enough to do something about it.
 
Raised in genteel poverty, with an adored musician father who died of a heroin overdose when she was fifteen, and subjected to the unwanted attentions of the middle-aged men at her mother’s supper parties, Andrea is indeed wounded. Then there’s the art she’s lived for, abandoned when she realises she’s not cut out for (p94):
 
a life-time of being told no, with the occasional yes showing up just to give you enough hope to carry on. I’m beginning to realize I don’t want to be rejected my entire life.
 
A good place to start a therapy, yet Andrea uses hers as one would a hairdresser, making appointments on an ad hoc basis rather than committing to a regular session. But I can hardly blame her when her therapist isn’t much cop either, enabling her erratic attendance rather than interpreting it as a step towards examining the insecure attachments in the rest of her life. I cringed when, in response to Andrea’s complaint about her mother moving to New Hampshire to support her brother and his wife and their terminally ill baby, she comes up with the cliché “And how does that make you feel?” (p65) But worse is to come. When Andrea, revealing her envy of the sick baby, says “It makes me feel she doesn’t love me” the therapist dictates how she should feel, pointing out how much her mother has nurtured and cared for her already. We don’t get to see Andrea’s hairdresser in action, but I’m sure mine (who happens to be a great supporter of my novels) could do better.
 
The quote from Hadley Freeman on the front of my copy describes All Grown Up as “One of the smartest and truest novels I’ve read about being a single woman”. While Andrea has some entertaining things to say about other people’s attitude to her single status – including urging her to read “a book about being single, written by an extremely attractive woman who is now married” (p9) – and sometimes feels life is happening to other people and leaving her behind, the concept seems as enigmatic as being grown-up. Which might be Jami Attenberg’s point.
 
Certainly this book has got under my skin and, despite my gripes, not entirely in a bad way. Published by Serpent’s Tail (who provided my review copy), All Grown Up would spark some lively book-group discussions. Do let me know what you think.


Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
8 Comments
Derbhile Dromey link
3/8/2017 09:13:09 am

Really interesting books - both books I'd love to read. It's irritating when blurbs describe books as funny - they usually never are.

Reply
Annecdotist
3/8/2017 11:52:48 am

Glad it caught your interest, Derbhile. The humour issue is particularly pertinent to me at the moment as, somewhat surprising to me given my general antipathy to comic novels, my WIP is a tragicomedy and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to pull it off. Fortunately I have some models in mind where the humour works for me in the way that this doesn’t.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
3/8/2017 11:43:39 am

I'm not sure if it's a pair of interesting books, or an interesting pair of books. Or maybe it's the pairing that's interesting. The characters do seem to share some similarities, but perhaps more differences. Though I noticed your comment that both books contained humour, but that you weren't so sure. You don't seem very keen on Andrea's therapist. I wonder are therapists like teachers. I'm assuming so. There are plenty of good ones, but perhaps the ones with foibles make for the more interesting read, particularly to those who may be less familiar with professional standards. I got the feeling that others considered Andrea's single childless life to be a life lacking. I hope that's an attitude that changes in the foreseeable future.
Thanks for letting me know about these two books.

Reply
Annecdotist
3/8/2017 12:31:33 pm

Thanks, Norah. Your comment came in as I was composing my reply to Derbhile about the humour issue. You’ve made me think further, as you often do, about my biases. It’s true that other readers might not find these two women so similar, but they both struck me as people settling for less because the alternative is scary (leaving an abusive husband, following a passion for art even if one isn’t successful) – and perhaps, now I think of it, they remind me of aspects of myself when I was their age, and before my mammoth therapy!
I’m very critical of poor quality therapy because it needs to justify the expense in both time and money, as well as the emotional challenges, in a reasonable outcome. Yes, there is good and bad in every profession but, while a bad teacher can be damaging, the next teacher might be a lot better and therefore able to compensate. If someone encounters a therapist who isn’t good enough they are likely to give up on the enterprise altogether.
A really bad fictional therapist can be extremely entertaining but many of those I criticise just fall a bit flat. And a good fictional therapist, even one who makes mistakes, can be very effective in adding emotional depth. And I do suspect that some of the poor quality fictional therapists are created by writers who genuinely think a conversation with a therapist is no different to a conversation with a sympathetic friend – or hairdresser.
And I suppose I feel sad for these fictional women – and their real-life counterparts – who could really use a good therapist to help them live more comfortably in their own skins. I think that’s as much a waste of human potential as those children who don’t ever come across a teacher who can connect with the way they need to learn.
Thanks for promoting this rant – I think I’m getting a bit clearer on my reasons for reviewing fictional therapists!

Reply
Norah Colvin link
8/8/2017 11:44:40 am

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about this, Anne, including thoughts about your biases. It's sometimes difficult to recognise and admit our biases, isn't it, but I guess if we are reflective, hopefully we will be a little more aware. I understand what you mean about someone perhaps giving up after encountering one bad therapist, but children getting another go with a, hopefully, better teacher. When so many of our issues are to do with attachment, relationships, it's a wonder it is not more recognised. I'm pleased that our conversations help you reach clarity. They help me too, though I think clarity may be a long way off. :)

Annecdotist
8/8/2017 02:39:02 pm

Ah, well, even if we achieve clarity it’s only temporary. And I think our biases are only a small step away from the preferences that make us who we are. Having benefited so much from therapy myself, and previously being severely harmed by someone who wasn’t a therapist but in a similar pastoral role, I suppose it upsets me when therapists get away with sloppy, thoughtless or self-serving interventions.

Charli Mills
5/8/2017 09:00:10 pm

Your search for literary examples of insecure attachment is always of interest to me. First, I'm curious to see how writers treat the subject (and often wonder if they even realize it's a theme in their own works). Then, I'm curious to see what you learn as a writer from it.

Reply
Annecdotist
7/8/2017 05:46:36 pm

I’m glad you find interesting, Charli. I imagine that many writers wouldn’t interpret this as an attachment issue, either because they followed the themes unconsciously or because they wouldn’t label it that way. I’m sort of disappointed that attachment difficulties haven’t entered the popular consciousness in the way that other difficulties have done, which may be because psychiatry hasn’t yet appropriated the term (although a lot of psychiatrists are interested, and have been involved in developing the ideas). On the other hand, maybe it’s a good thing as it would inevitably be misused and misunderstood.

Reply



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