A Dangerous Age

I discovered Ellen Gilchrist in 1984 on NPR, was fascinated with her accent and loved her commemtaries. I remember reading LAND OF DREAMY DREAMS, THE ANNUNCIATION and VICTORY OVER JAPAN and being taken by her writing, particularly her short stories. Then she dropped off the radio and I stopping reading her, a little like someone waking up one day and remembering that he used to eat at a favorite restaurant but no longer does, for no particular reason. Now Ms. Gilchrist has written a novel, her first in several years. I bought it after being drawn in by its first few pages that I have reread three times now and find them just as wonderful as upon first reading. The short novel begins with the plans for a society wedding of Winifred Hand Abadie and Charles Christian Kane to have taken place on December 21, 2001 in Raleigh, North Carolina. The wedding party would be composed of friends and family in their thirties and from the upper middle class. Then Ms. Gilchrist writes in clear prose that appears effortless: "Except the wedding never took place because Charles Kane perished on September 11, 2001, along with three thousand other perfectly lovely, helpless human beings. He had been in the first tower of the World Trade Center, on the fifteenth floor, with two other young brokers, trying to set up a deal to build a new tennis club in Raleigh." Like the restaurant we revisit-- to continue my trite metaphor-- Ms. Gilchrist isn't as good in this novel as I remembered, and I cannot explain exactly why. She writes about three women in the Hand family, Winifred, Louise and Olivia. The narrative jumps back and forth. I thought at first the story would be Louise's since it begins with her as first person narrator. Then the third person narrator takes over-- at least for a few pages-- with most of the book being about Olivia, who writes for a newspaper in Tulsa. Women in their thirties marry men in their twenties-- which should come as no surprise to Gilchrist fans-- usually after they have managed to get themselves with child without much effort on anyone's part. The men are gung-ho about the military. The day after Charles' funeral on 10 January 2002 ("it is extremely hard to have a funeral when you don't have anything to bury"), his identical twin cousins joined the Marines. Although Olivia's husband Bobby, is called up to active duty when his reserve unit is activated rather than volunteering, he still essentially believes in his leaders and is proud to be an American. The women can be just as patriotic if from a distance. Winifred signs a letter to Olivia as "Your flag-waver cousin, Winifred" but makes love to Brian on three-hundred-dollar "450-count percale sheets rinsed in lavender" on a nine-hundred-dollar mattress. Apparently she took seriously the President's exhortation to support our troops by going shopping. Olivia, on the other hand, acknowledges that "the South and Midwest always fought the wars, farm boys and high school athletes, poor boys

Not having read Ellen Gilchrist before, I was expecting something more literary from A Dangerous Age. The novel opens with Louise narrating life-changing incidents in casual, wry prose. Major events tumble out, one per paragraph, told in a cavalier, almost absurdist tone. Then suddenly Louise's cousin Olivia de Havilland Hand takes over the narrative and becomes the main voice and character for the rest of the novel. More thoughtful and sincere, Olivia is a newspaper editor and much of the story is a vehicle for her views on the Iraq war. As it turns out, all the primary characters in the story are female cousins who marry men serving in Iraq. This coincidental situation has the effect of both 1) seeming artificial and propagandistic; 2) driving home the legitimate point that for military families the Iraq war is an all-consuming experience and totally different than for most of the people in the U.S. Olivia is pro-Bush and for the war, yet critical of some of its aspects and may ultimately be against the war. One cousin questions the war, another signs a letter "your flag-waver cousin". Although full of politics, what point the author is making politically, other than relativism, is ambiguous. A Dangerous Age is skillfully written and deceptively casual; describing many mundane details of life in moments of crisis or profound change add a surface realism, but also a lack of drama. I found the novel quite readable but not compelling.

Ellen Gilchrist's latest novel "A Dangerous Age" was made especially enjoyable to me because of her dry wit. I laughed out loud several times, and while there is certainly tragedy in this novel, it is by no means a "tragic novel". In the character of Olivia (arguably the main character) we explore how opinions and convictions can change once you have some "skin in the game". I didn't feel that Olivia's questions about the war in Iraq were a political statement by Gilchrist, but rather a mirror of the uncertainty that many of us feel. What is right? Do I even know? CAN I even know? Those are legitimate, often unanswerable, questions. "A Dangerous Age" was a quick, interesting and enjoyable read.

"The long wait was absolutely worth it. Gilchrist proves again why she is one of today's premier storytellers. We could not put A Dangerous Age down, the story of the women of the Hand family - Olivia, Winifred and Louse - are sure to be the plot of a movie very soon."