Very Cold People a Polarizing Novel

 

 

Very Cold People  (2022)

By Sarah Manguso

Hogarth, 186 pages.

★

 

Very Cold People is the debut novel of poet and short story writer Sarah Manguso. I have seldom read reviews as extreme as those associated with this one. Some have called it “brilliant” and have hailed Manguso as a rising voice in literature. Others have pegged it as “scrambled memories,” “overwrought,” and “horrid.” If you’re wondering, there is very little gender breakdown in those opinions. I am afraid that I am firmly in the second camp.

 

By rights I should have liked this novel if, for no other reason, Manguso's fictional town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, often seems a lot like the Pennsylvania town in which I was raised. But whereas the New York Times credited Very Cold People with making  “beauty of boring old daily pain,” my take is that she made boring even more tedious.

 

Mancuso is 49 years old, technically Generation X, but her outlook is more that of a Millennial. If I had to single out a salient way in which post-Baby Boomers are different, I'd say that too many Millennials (and Gen Z) are solipsistic and bemoan their vulnerability. By contrast, my generation didn't give a flying fig about what adults thought of us and did not expect anyone to throw pity parties for us. “Work it out yourself” was a common command.*

 

Mancuso's novel is also written in the stream of consciousness style. It reads like random observations scribbled into a diary that are only tangentially related to other fragments, rants, and pronouncements. Stream of consciousness is notoriously difficult to master. To put it another way, if I only skimmed my way through James Joyce, the only thing that made me finish Very Cold People is that it’s a short, quick read.

 

The central character Ruthie comes from a battered town where blue-collar dreams have gone sour. It's also a place with big homes and plaques of local elites reminiscent of the Cabots and Lowells. Ruthie’s family has fallen upon hard times and don't think they should be near the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. That's probably true, but they nonetheless live in both proximity to and a proclivity toward violence. Her family is so parsimonious that they count pennies and measure bathtub water. Ruthie wants out of a graying town where her reality and others such as she is that all they have going for them is that they are white.

 

It's a tough break for sure, and I'd be the first to agree that children shouldn't have to go through such things. But her personal pity party is annoying. It’s if she's the only one who ever felt the way she does. Newsflash, 12 percent of Americans are poor, and half earn less than the median income. That’s also an injustice, but this leads me to another point.

 

Were this a semi-autobiographical novel with built-in calls for justice or pleas for class solidarity, I would be more charitable. Instead, it's all about Ruthie and how is she escaped Waitsfield. Earlier used the term solipsistic for reason. I found her to be one of the very cold people of the book's title. It's as if she lacks empathy for anyone not named Ruthie. In such a scenario, her escape doesn't warrant applause, merely a shrug.

 

As noted, Very Cold People is merely a string of random thoughts, the sort that more interesting writers might jot down in a notebook for future use. I couldn't help but compare it with the work of Richard Russo. His blue-color novels have lots of things that Very Cold People lacks: a plot, careful editing, empathy, sympathetic characters, and a point.

 

Rob Weir

 

* As I’ve written before, I’m skeptical of generations because whatever criteria that is used to “define” them only holds true in a general sense and often breaks down in voluminous specific cases.