My friends have been frantically buzzing about the second season of the HBO series Girls. They generally feel ripped off: the characters’ dark sides and relationships are unraveled at breakneck speed, when all that devoted viewers wanted was more reason to love those quirky, young New Yorkers from season one. The characters have turned no new corners; loose ends have simply curled up into balls at the conclusion of the season; and everyone is getting back together with their old boyfriends. How can we experience empathy among all this mess? Who do we root for?
Regardless of what their opinions say about Girls as we await season 3, they say a lot about fiction. We want fiction and television to make us see a familiar world in a fresh way. We want to empathize with the world, and in turn to feel our burden is shared. This is what good writing does for us, whether or not we ever talk about it. Here’s some news, bros: I have a novel that does this super well. (And it, like Girls, is written by a woman.)
With each “turn of the screw” in A. M. Homes not-quite-so-new-anymore (sorry!) novel May We Be Forgiven, something clicks, something charms, and I laugh. I mean, it’s no funny novel – more like an epic, but our narrator, Harry, says and does things that are framed in such a way as to make me laugh. He is losing his mind and regaining it over and over again just like I do nearly every day; unfortunately, I don’t laugh at myself quite as much. A wild thing about humanity is that even among suffering, mental illness, death, we still have to brush our teeth and bathe the dog. Here, Harry takes care of a dog (among other things) that belongs to his mentally unstable, murderous brother, and Homes writes the relationship to be both beautiful and funny (not quite so heartbreaking as it was in The Dog Stars). At the halfway point, I am already grateful for this novel. As Homes’ novel forgives the characters – convinces us to see the heart in Harry, we remember to also care for the demons, fears, and the heart in ourselves.
And greatest of all, by virtue of its being a book, the entire saga is written BEFORE you start reading it. I wouldn’t say to give up on Girls, but good luck suspending your judgment until the end of the next season. Whether you feel that you lose or win at that point, don’t forget that novels are here for you, loyal as the family dog.
by Whitney
Comments are closed.