A trio of good reads about choices and power
Improvement, Joan Silber
Reminiscent of Elizabeth Strout’s Anything is Possible, Improvementis a series of short stories that take place in the same fictional universe, linked by the relationships of the characters. The reader would do well to construct a chart to see how the characters and the events of one story connect to others. Reyna is a single mother living in NYC who, in the first story, talks about going to visit her boyfriend Boyd at Rikers Island and about Kiki, her aunt who, as young woman in her mid-twenties, went to Istanbul with friends, stayed, married a rug salesman and mysteriously returned 8 years later to the States. Kiki also lives in the city and takes care of Oliver, Reyna’s child, when she goes on her monthly visits to the prison. In a later story, the recently released Boyd immediately gets involved in a scheme to buy cigarettes in Virginia in bulk and then drive them to New York to sell them. When on the morning of one such run, their driver is unavailable, Boyd asks Reyna to do it. Reluctantly she agrees but then has a last-minute change of heart, fearful of the consequences for Oliver if she is caught. Instead, one of Boyd’s cronies, Silas, who has no driver’s license, drives and is subsequently involved in a fatal accident, for which his sister blames Reyna. A later story focuses on Darisse, a waitress in Richmond that Silas met during earlier runs and for whom he fell hard. Darisse is left wondering when Silas doesn’t show up, and questions what she understands about love. About two thirds of the way through the novel, the story floats back around to Kiki and the reader learns about her years in Turkey. When political unrest causes Usman’s rug shop to close, they move to Cappadocia, his home town, an historic but provincial outback that finally proves too third-world for Kiki. During her last weeks there, they play host to three young Germans who are travelling through the country, collecting and then re-selling historic artifacts. The Germans become the center of several later chapters, with the daughter of one of them befriending Reyna.
The individual stories are compelling and the characters are well drawn. The motif of the Turkish carpets and tapestries runs through the book mimicking the weaving together of these various people and the way their lives touch each other. The book raises questions about the degree of responsibility we have for the choices others make as a consequence of our own choices. Silber also invites the characters and the reader to consider what loving another means and how far one is willing to go for love. This would make a great book club selection. There’s so much to figure out, including the significance of the title.
The Female Persuasion, Meg Wolitzer
A bit like Improvement, this novel periodically refocuses the spotlight and perspective on a different character. The story begins with college freshman Greer Kadetsky, a lonely misfit of a girl who is stuck in a third-tier school even though she was admitted to Yale, because her careless parents forgot to fill out the financial aid forms. Encouraged to go out and do the party circuit one night by Zee Eisenstat, a feminist fellow freshman who soon becomes Greer’s best friend, Greer becomes the victim of unwanted pawing by a suave fraternity boy and it is with this incident that the novel’s central topic takes off: the relationship between men and women and how women can get power to assert themselves as equals. Zee and Greer’s attempts to bring the boy’s inappropriate behavior to justice are unsuccessful as the university gives him the proverbial slap on the wrist, but soon after, Zee takes Greer to hear a campus talk by famous feminist Faith Frank (think Gloria Steinhem) and Greer suddenly sees that attaining equity for women can be accomplished on a much larger playing field. Greer becomes enamored with all things Faith and after college manages to land a job with Faith’s new foundation which is committed to hosting conferences and funding projects designed to help women all over the world. The foundation is bank-rolled by Emmett Schrader, a venture capitalist who has the hots for Faith and whose funding power eventually becomes at odds with Faith’s aspirations.
Greer’s chapters focus on her search for significance – the possibility of making a difference for other women, a goal which competes against her love for and need to support her hometown boyfriend, Cory, and eventually against the political hypocrisy of Faith, her hero. Faith’s chapters show the reader her growth from a young idealist to a more seasoned older woman who doesn’t quite realize what she has lost along the way. Zee gets chapters as well. The one who introduces Greer to Faith and more of a radical feminist than Greer, Zee wants to get in on the foundation’s work too, but is thwarted in a decision that fractures a friendship. She goes on to be a very effective therapist and finds a life partner in Nicole, a school administrator. She is, perhaps, an example of advocating for women on a smaller, more personal scale. Cory, Greer’s longtime boyfriend, appears to initially have it all: four years at Yale and then a lucrative management job in Manilla. For a time, it seems the challenges to his and Greer’s relationship are ones of geography and career success. Then, a terrible family tragedy brings Cory home and his world and stereotypical male role are rocked. Cory’s acceptance of traditional female roles as caregiver and house cleaner reflect the possibility that men can exist outside of the patriarchal hierarchy, although he isn’t exactly thriving.
With each character, Wolitzer poses the questions: What does it mean to be powerful? What does it mean to make a difference? How do gender roles impact each of these? Greer’s teenage babysitter is interested in her employer’s advocacy and we see the mantle of feminism both handed down and reinterpreted by the next generation. The novel ends in 2019 against the backdrop of the presidency of the biggest misogynist around. Clearly, there’s still a whole lot of work to be done.
The Shakespeare Requirement, Julie Schumacher
Much less serious than the previously discussed novels, but spot on with its portrayal of bureaucratic power plays, the comical sequel to Dear Committee, The Shakespeare Requirement returns the reader to the world of Payne University (an appropriate pun for the distress it engenders) and picks up with Schumacher’s skewering of university politics. The Economics Department’s march to not only take over the physical space of the English Department but to in fact eliminate it all together as a useless subject is led by its chair, Roland Gladwell. Jay Fitger, the protagonist of the earlier book, is the newly appointed English Department chair, and seems ill-equipped to fight off his nemesis. As the book opens, Fitger is moving into his new wasp-infested office that has no working telephone or computer, no air-conditioning and a shortage of electrical outlets. “He had recently returned from a visit to Econ’s portion of the building, where he had been mistaken by one of the clerical staff for a vagrant or tourist – another gawker come to admire the hot-and-cold-water fountains and Orwellian flat-screens, the espresso bar, and the sunshine filtering gracefully through the skylights and casting itself in subtle patterns on the tile floor. Descending the stairs again to English, he left behind a silent, air-conditioned Erewhon and reentered the grim and steamy underworld that served as heart and soul, at Payne, of the liberal arts” (2). Fitger ends up missing the first week of the semester due to an allergic reaction to wasp stings, while his “electronic calendar, PCal,[which Fitger refuses to use] which indicated that he was free every day, all semester, was filling up” (34).
It is with great reluctance that Fitger assumes the responsibility of his department’s survival which, he quickly learns, begins with obtaining unanimous consensus on a Statement of Vision, a necessary step in order to secure funding. The various eccentric characters in his department are loathe to agree to the importance of anyone else’s niche area over their own and the suggestion that perhaps it is time to eliminate Shakespeare as a required course for English majors creates an uproar. Gladwell seizes upon this conflict by surreptitiously enlisting a student to start an SOS (Save Shakespeare) campaign complete with buttons, flyers, rallies and editorials in the school newspaper. Fitger attempts to gain the support of his former wife, Janet, an administrator and now paramour of the dean, in order to bolster his department. He’s also still in love with her, a point that does not interest her. Fitger’s administrative assistant, Fran, adds a fair amount of comedy to the situation as well. Like most people in that position, she knows far more about what is going on than anyone else and she does her best to keep Fitger afloat, which is not easy considering his own eccentricities that include his phobia to technology.
The chapters alternate points of view between a variety of characters, including those already mentioned as well as several students, providing a broader context for Fitger’s woes against the backdrop of the larger university. Everyone is vying for power whether it be personal or professional. Schumacher has created a genuinely funny satire of this insular world, one to which anyone in pretty much any large organization can relate.
