Truth and Consequences

TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES by Alison Lurie March 10, 2007 Rating: 4 Stars TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES was my introduction to Alison Lurie, and I was very impressed. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Lurie has a knack for words. And for such a short novel, I felt she did a great job in writing about a complex set of people whose lies and lives are entwined in such a way that one can only imagine disaster awaiting all four of them by the end of the book. Jane Mackenzie is the wife of an older man, a distinguished professor and scholar who had recently injured his back. His pain is so great it is debilitating, and now she deals with his new life, that of a handicapped man, who can barely move and expects his wife to be at his beck and call. Jane fell in love with his body and his mind, but what she sees now is not the man she married. But she carries on, knowing that she must be loyal to him, a man that gave her such love and pleasure for the past sixteen years. Alan Mackenzie feels that things will not get any better. He's lost interest in his work, although he has just been accepted as a University Fellow where he teaches and Jane works. Coincidentally, Jane is an administrator for the Matthew Unger Humanities Center where Alan is to be working, and to compound his problems with his back, one of the new fellows will be Delia Delaney, known throughout as being difficult and somewhat of a diva. Upon arrival, she covets the office that Alan will be occupying, and hence the drama begins. Delia's presence causes trouble for Alan and Jane's marriage, but Jane is unaware of the relationship that begins between the two of them. She thinks that Alan looks upon her with disdain, not realizing that he's actually lusting after Delia. On the other hand, Jane is befriended by Delia's husband Henry, a poet who no longer writes. Alan and Jane now live double lives, never letting on to the other what is going on. Jane's unhappiness in her own marriage, however, does not cause her to stray at first, but she does realize how horrible her relationship with Alan is once she develops a true friendship with Henry, a man that truly seems to care about Jane. Readers will root for Jane and hope that Alan gets what's coming to him, and for me, the book ended on a note that I thought resolved all the relationships. Not everyone gets a happy ending. TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES was a wonderfully written book, short but to the point. I will definitely look for more by Alison Lurie.

Worthy wife Jane falls out of love with her husband Alan who has become totally self-centred because of consistent terrible back pains (the descriptions of which throughout the novel are rather repetitive). She falls guiltily in love with Henry, while Alan falls for the Henry's narcissistic, manipulative but gorgeous wife Delia. It is a slightly formulaic campus novel, and for most of the book you think it is fairly predictable; you think you can guess how it will probably end, but ... well, see whether you have guessed right. It's not as good a book as Lurie's Foreign Affairs, with which I was much more involved, but, like all her other books, this one is written with effortless ease and slips down easily and pleasantly.

Alison Lurie is a gifted, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author, widely known for "The War Between the Tates," which is only one of her brilliant novels. "Truth and Consequences" is a good, well-written, easy-to-read character study of a small slice of academia in a small town; it is positively wicked in it's dead-on perceptions of different academic "types," from the ethereal, airy Visiting Fellow, Delia Delaney, to the quickly fracturing couple, architectural professor Alan Mackenzie and his wife Jane, Administrative Manager for the small college at which they all work. In a sly comedy of manners, Lurie examines what can happen when the scales tip just a bit: Alan's chronic back pain from an injury changes him from a sexy,loveable husband to a whining petulant child; Jane turns from a happy, contented wife in love with her husband to one who mistakes him for a stranger; and strange, toxic love is in the air everywhere. This is a fun book, and I highly recommend it, without reservation.

Alan and Jane Mackenzie seemed to have the perfect life. Both own a beautiful hundred and fifty year old house with its view of the lake in Corinth, New York, Alan, is tenured at the local University; he's a successful academic, a rising young star, and a renowned specialist on 18th century religious architecture. While not as academically accomplished as Alan, Jane has carved a respectable niche for herself, working as a university director at the, Matthew Unger Center for the Humanities. Jane prides herself on her efficiency and her ability to get the job done. The cracks in the façade of their carefully layered marriage are exposed when Alan begins to suffer from chronic pain, after wrenching his back during a volleyball game. Wracked with an almost constant ache, and with no amount of medical expertise able to cure him, Alan turns almost overnight into a middle aged, overweight, cantankerous, narcotic-addled, and constipated misanthrope. Jane initially thinks that Alan will get better, but as the months wear on, it soon becomes obvious that her husband's affliction is not going to go away. Forced into the role that she just didn't see coming, Jane begins to, not only question her marriage, but also her penchant for being "nice." As time passes, she begins to resent her husband's cranky, touchy, and irritable demands, and is tired of ''forcing her voice into a pleasant neutrality." She constantly admonishes herself for feeling like this, but she readily admits that she's just not the same person. She's tired and worried and no fun for anybody, and they're "not really husband and wife anymore, we're more house keeper, or even caregiver and care getter." As Alan's illness continuing to wind itself around them greedily choking their marriage, salvation arrives in the shape of Delia Delaney. Delia is an absolutely gorgeous southern poet and essayist, a self confessed narcissist, who spends her life manipulating others to do her bidding, and who is hounded by almost constant migraines. While, Alan and Delia form an attachment and share inspiration from their pain and suffering. Delia's hunky husband Henry, finds a kindred strength of mind in Jane. Henry is a onetime poet turned freelance editor, but who has forsaken his own career to support Delia's. Delia and Alan begin to have clandestine meetings in Delia's office, where Delia is able to reinvigorate Alan's stalled artistry. Only through Delia is Alan able to crawl out from under the heap of dirt and stones that his life had become, and dare to commit himself to art and love, persuading him to "see the clawing lizard in his back as not wholly evil." Meanwhile, Jane and Henry form a caregivers' society of two, meeting at the farmers' market, where they offer condolences to each other and commiserate over their beleaguered spouses. Author Alison Lurie cleverly skewers contemporary marriage as she sets both couples up. Ideals eventually clash when both couples realize that their marriag

Pulitzer Prize winner Alison Lurie once again sets her sights and satiric pen on scholarly saints and sinners by placing "Truth and Consequences" in a university community. Lurie, as many know, teaches writing, folklore and literature at Cornell University. However, Jane MacKenzie, her protagonist, is not a teacher but an administrator and a good, faithful wife. She and Alan, a professor, have been happily wed for many years. They're a couple most would envy - intellectual, well positioned in life, and secure. Their well ordered existence begins to crumble when Alan develops a back problem. It becomes so debilitating that his career suffers and Jane finds herself becoming his nurse. Sad to say it isn't a miracle of medicine that seems to cure Alan's back but the solicitations of newly arrived Delia Delaney, a beautiful best-selling novelist. She, in turn, is married to Henry who eventually finds himself attracted to Jane. What a pleasure it is to hear about the romps and relationships among the intelligentsia as related in the stage trained voice of Jamie Heinlen. She often appears in New York theater, a training that is evident in her understated yet compelling performance. Heinlen effortlessly glides between the comic and the desperate treating listeners to a bravura reading. - Gail Cooke