"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
may be set in Russia in the 19th century novel, but it's certainly echoed in the eccentric unhappiness of Rebecca Waiit's modern British family in I'M
SO SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY (Harper Perennial). The three adult children; Alice, Hanna, Michael, and their mum, Celia, have insights into each other's predictable, self-defeating crazy behavior. They roll eyes, wring hands,and hope others will get wise to how they are making themselves miserable. Self-knowledge is often submerged in a self-deprecating humor, that they will somehow "muddle through."
"Family is worth it, it's all you may have?" is the mantra of Alice, the "good daughter," who ruefully accepts the "lack of progress" in her life. As I'M SO SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY opens, Alice, in her self-assigned role of family "greeter," at the funeral of her Aunt Katy, also wants to see her arrangements are in order. Yet, despite her efforts to save Celia, her long-suffering mother, trouble, the event becomes a vaudeville of simultaneous funerals. There's psychic slapstick in how her "perfect" arrangements deteriorate. Alice can only shrug. Doing the "right" thing, no matter how painstaking the effort, can be unpredictable?
She's not responsible for missed connections, oppositional personalities, idiots, who believe their internal monologues and act on them! So why the anxiety? Underneath Alice's controlled "good girl" surface is real concern about her sister Hanna, who she hasn't seen in five years--who may not even show up? Who knows with Hanna? Though fraternal twins, the sisters have zero physical resemblance--a fact that mirrors their emotional relationship. Hanna, a free spirit,"says and does, as she likes. At least their brother Michael, a lawyer, can be relied on, Alice muses. Though his choice in women is questionable.
In a similar fashion, Michael and Hanna, who are in communication, wonder about Alice's martyrdom to "protect" their ever-resourceful sometimes manipulative mother. Stoic, suffering Celia, despite the trauma of her childhood, actually had the life she wanted--education, marriage, kids, jobs. Though divorced (though that's not the reason) Celia has a deep need for attention. This fact, known by her adult children, makes the others wonder why Alice feel compelled to serve Celia's needs?
Among the unhappy fault lines in Celia's upbringing was the disaster of Katy's mental illness. Now Ceila, the family ugly duckling, is burying the sister, whose beauty and brilliance once captivated her parents. Accepting she was unattractive and often friendless, Celia learned to take what she wanted.
Alice's sensitivity to her mother's emotional experience is the unexplored resemblance to her own life.
Hanna, blonde and smart, resembles Katy before her mental illness. Unlike Alice, Hanna possesses courage and a bold sense of adventure. Living a solitary life, Alice, misses the closeness of their shared childhood. She mourns her missing sister, as Celia mourns her once beautiful sister, Katy, whose mental illness took up so much of their family's life. What does Celia have of family now? Alice and Michael, sometimes...Hanna? Never. Opaquely, Celia wonders what caused the animosity between them?
This clever novel is bookended by two funerals, each a reckoning of the clashes between truth and the fictions we tell ourselves. There's also the reality of how people change in reaction to their family life. When Hanna, who welcomes challenge has a crisis, the inherited sources of family trauma and misery are finally revealed. Yet such "unhappiness" proves trivial to the crucial task of remaking a life. In this crucible, the individuals in this family transform themselves.
The psychological territory of siblings; the expectation to be friends, the competition for parental approval, the intrusions of destiny may be familiar territory. But in I'M SO SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY, all of this is true and satirical. What circumscribes and unites this family drama is a "knowing" comedy of cross-purposes. I found this novel, moving, entertaining, and oddly unpredictable.
S.W.
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