BIRD IN HAND (2009)
Christina Kline Baker
William Morrow, 288
pages, 978006078901
* *
Christina Baker Kline's 2013 novel Orphan Train was a runaway hit. As is often the case, this sparked
interest in earlier novels and rumors of impending movie options on those
works. I liked Orphan Train, so I
decided to check out an earlier work, Bird
in Hand. After having done so, I must conclude that Kline is a writer only
now hitting her stride. Bird in Hand reads
like something made for the Lifetime channel.
It is perhaps good as a non-challenging beach read, but it's neither original nor
substantive.
Kline employs a few of the oldest conventions in literature:
a love triangle, the allure of dangerous liaisons, and the pull between
stability and sexiness. At heart it is a book about Alison and Claire, two
Southern girls/best friends who live life in the New York City fast lane after
college. Their husbands–whom Claire and Alison met in college–become fast
friends and the two couples build lives that revolve around loft parties,
dining out, and gallery openings. Their close friendship slowly cools, though, when
Alison and Charlie have two kids and move to the suburbs. Claire and Ben stay
in New York, where he is an ambitious architect and she a writer. Alison also
works in the publishing industry, though for a parenting magazine, whereas
Claire's novel–based perhaps too closely on her and Alison's lives—becomes an
overnight sensation. To kick off a press junket, Claire holds a large party in
the city, which Alison reluctantly attends–reluctantly because she and Claire
have drifted apart and Alison feels woefully inferior. In a telling moment,
Alison searches for an outfit without baby vomit on it, a startling contrast to
Claire's sultry ensemble.
On her drive back home to New Jersey, Alison loses her
bearings and is involved in a horrible auto accident in which a small boy is
killed. It's not her fault, but add grief and guilt to Alison's litany of
inadequacies. As it transpires, the accident is the catalyst for serious
reexamination on three sides. Charlie is bored with his soulless job, the
suburbs, responsibility, and Alison. She, in turn, is feeling unappreciated and
unloved. She's right. Charlie and Claire have secretly had the hots for each
other since college and each sees the other as a thrilling alternative to
their rock steady (read "boring") spouses. The rest of the novel
follows a path we anticipate will come to no good end.
Both the scenario and the writing are more melodramatic than
tragic–like a soap opera that's gone on too long. The novel also suffers in
that of its four central characters, only its least developed, Ben, is in any
way likable and he only because he's so clueless we feel sorry for him for much
of the book. Claire is still another literary convention: a femme fatale. She's a Southern princess:
spoiled, selfish, amoral, and sexy. The last quality explains why Charlie is
attracted to her, but there is little reason why Claire would reciprocate.
Charlie is handsome, but he's also an empty suit whose ability to manipulate others
barely masks his slacker demeanor, his lack of compassion, and his overall flat
affect. We can, however, see why he'd be bored with Alison. At the risk of
making a gendered remark, she's one of my least favorite literary types: a
Millennial mom written as though her generation invented parenting. Only toward
the end does she experience more feistiness than a cleaning cloth. If the
message of this novel is that life is complicated, thanks for stating the
obvious. If, however, we are supposed to feel pity, sympathy, or compassion for
any of them, Bird In Hand left those
options in the proverbial bush. Orphan
Train succeeds because Baker populated it with sympathetic characters;
those in Bird in Hand are merely pathetic,
Rob Weir
No comments:
Post a Comment