Before and After -
two novels that hinge on life-altering accidents
Coincidentally, I just read two books back to back that, although very different in tone and style, have plots that hinge on fatal automobile accidents and their aftermath. Filled with twists that would do Sophie Hannah proud and in the style of Lianne Moriarty, Ghosted by Rosie Walsh is a satisfying romantic mystery page-turner. Sarah, a 30-something British woman who moved to California in her teens, newly divorced from her American husband and business partner, returns to her little hometown each year on the anniversary of “the accident.” As the book begins, she is on her annual trip and meets Eddie by the village green, trying to coax a wayward sheep back to its home. Their attraction is instant and they spend every minute of the next week together, each sure that s/he has finally found “the one.” After 7 days (and nights) together, Eddie leaves for a previously planned vacation week in Spain, promising to call from the airport – but then he doesn’t. Nor does he call later that day or the next or the next. Sarah sends texts and emails and leaves voice messages, increasingly frantic about what has happened to Eddie whom she is positive was not a one-week stand. Friends suggest that, as the saying goes, he just isn’t into her after all, but Sarah does not believe it and posts on his Facebook wall, asking if anyone has seen him. The mystery deepens when a friend responds that he cancelled his Spanish vacation. A second mystery surrounds the event for which Sarah makes her pilgrimages. Letters are interspersed throughout the main narrative which suggest someone in the present missing someone from the past. A close friend or young relative appears to have been injured or killed, but who that is and how it happened only gradually unravels. I think I finished this within about 48 hours of picking it up. It’s a fun, quick page-turner.
Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, is a more complex and literary novel that both challenges the reader to consider what s/he would do at each turn and to work towards an understanding of the choices made by the characters when “the right thing to do” isn’t obvious. Although the novel is set in Israel, the topic of illegal immigrants and refugees is very relevant to American readers and the focus on ethical responsibility is universal. Dr. Eitan Green, neurosurgeon, husband to a police detective and father of two young sons, is exhausted after a long shift at the hospital, but wide awake; remembering a challenging SUV track in the desert, he impulsively decides to drive there before going home. Turning up Janis Joplin to full blast and speeding to 120 kilometers an hour in the full moonlight, Eitan finds himself feeling liberated and happy. “It had been years since he had enjoyed himself so much alone, with no other eyes to share the wonder with him, with no one else to echo his joy” (21). His happiness is short-lived, however when he hits an African man walking in the dark. Jumping out, he realizes the man is still alive, but just barely, and sure to die before Eitan can get him to a hospital. Recognizing that if he calls the police, he will be charged with manslaughter, lose his medical license and upend his family’s life, and realizing that he cannot save the man, Eitan decides to save himself and drives off. The following day, he repeats to himself, “I ran a man over and drove away” (27), but with each passing hour, the memory seems more and more surreal. He assumes that with time, the pain of his action will pass. “Habituation. The gradual loss of sensitivity” (30). He would be left with unease. “People live entire lives with some measure or another of unease” (32). Eitan’s belief that the incident will gradually fade is short-lived when the dead man’s wife shows up at his door and hands him his wallet. She demands that he meet her that night at a deserted garage near a kibbutz and he shows up with money, planning to pay her off, but her price is more costly than what he brings; at the garage he finds other Eritreans in need of medical help and it becomes clear that she expects him to be a doctor to them – every night. While it is easy to sympathize with Eitan, who is a victim of a random event that is turning his life upside down, he is not entirely likeable, his prejudices, past and present, suggesting that he has much to learn about, as Atticus Finch would say, walking in another man’s shoes. Sirkit, the widow of the man Eitan hits, vacillates between victim and victimizer. As an illegal immigrant in Israel, her choices are necessarily limited and her bouts of desperation strong. While one may initially resent the unsustainable penalty she imposes on him, the reader, like Eitan, gets to know her and her circumstances and begins to see her differently. It took longer for me to read this book, as I was taking notes throughout (for my book group). It is a powerful story that should generate much discussion.
