Desperate Characters, Paula Fox

After finishing all of the books in my briefcase (and after spending all of a day each with both Lockpick and The Colorado Kid, I stopped in to Iconoclast Books in Ketchum, Idaho, and started looking for something to fill my time. I ended up, for no real reason, with Paula Fox's Desperate Characters.

Having no idea who Paula Fox was or what the novel would offer, I just set into it. And, wow.

Originally published in 1970, the book had lapsed into obscurity until, in '99, Norton republished it and, consequentially, I ended up with a copy.

It's one of those 70's novels where nothing happens but, really, everything is happening. Each small moment is shaping the very whole of the characters.

Pretty much, the book is centered around Sophie, a middle-aged woman whose husband is a rigid, unemotional man and whose life is bereft of anything meaningful at the moment (or so she thinks); she's not working on anything, she's not happy. Then, her husband (Otto) finds himself with a partner (Charlie) breaking away. Sophie is bitten by a stray cat. There's a party. There's a late-night visit from Charlie. There's a slip of tongue and Sophie accidentally mentions her ex-lover to Charlie. There are kids who aren't at all like Otto and Sophie were, very liberal teens protesting the war. Charlie's wife is experiencing her own sexual revolution. Rocks are thrown through windows. The bite becomes infested, Sophie doesn't want to see a doctor. The cat keeps coming back.

And all of it is adding up to Sophie's sub-concious decision of whether or not she's happy, whether she loves Otto or her old lover, whether she can be happy anymore.

I devoured this one just as fast as I had the other two books, and I'm going to be re-reading it fairly often, I think. It's a goddamn gem and, really, I was amazed that such a subtle and meaningful book could just, almost accidentally, end up in my library. Rad.