Victor was not a nice man; in fact, he is introduced in the opening
sentence as “an angry man” and “an ugly man (3).” At various times, Barbra thinks of him as “a
bad man” (39) and “a mercenary” (95).
Alex hopes that after her father’s death, her mother will tell all about
Victor: “’Like the terrible things he’s
done. Like why she stayed with him’”
(216). In the course of the novel, the
reader does not in fact learn all that Victor did; there are hints of shady
real estate deals; perhaps his love for the television show The Sopranos tells everything: “’This show is very good. . . . they really
get it right.’” He is a philanderer, and
women accuse him of harassment and physical abuse. He is totally self-absorbed, convinced of his
own self-importance. He expects total
obedience from his wife and children. When
problems arise, he pays to make them go away.
He seems to have a total lack of basic decency. The indirect descriptions of his personality
are perfect: he “enjoyed the fish that
snuck in and stole the pellets away from the turtles” (199) and is “fascinated
with the nutria’s insidious power and focus” (39).
Through flashbacks, the beginnings of Victor and Barbra’s relationship
are described. Barbra is a vain,
materialistic person who saw Victor as her way out of poverty, a means of
giving her the stability her own father denied her. Her mantra is “thin and pretty,” a mantra she
constantly repeats to herself as she ensures she walks thousands of steps daily
to remain fit. Victor calls his wife “Barbie”
and that’s an appropriate name. She
sees herself as a swan: “The only animal
Barbra appreciated was the swan, which was exactly her type: shapely, quiet, pretty, refined, and
somewhere off in the distance” (38 – 39).
She makes an agreement to accept his behaviour in return for the objects
and privileges the marriage brings her.
Interestingly, when Victor is taken to the hospital, the EMT would “swear
she’d been dying and had just come back to life” (6).
Alex hates her father for his “seventy-three years of deviousness and
control” (36). She lists the things she
remembers from her childhood: his “shut-down
emotions” and insistence that “no one speak on Sundays in our home because it
was the only day you weren’t working.”
She tells him, “’I do not forgive you for exposing us to all your
illegal activities. . . . I do not forgive you for making me believe less in
the possibility of good in the world. I
do not forgive you for spitting on the notion of family’” (108 – 109). It is evident that her view of herself has
been shaped by Victor’s comments to her when she was a teenager with acne and a
few extra pounds of weight: “She had
refined her brain as much as possible to not give a fuck about what her father
thought, and yet, every once in a while, she still saw herself through his
eyes, heard his voice in her head . . . And then she caught herself assessing
her physical form, and it was not with love, no joy at its bounty, but rather
through a skewed, screwed-up lens” (108).
Gary too has been affected by having a “cruel, absent father”
(241). He wants, more than anything, to
be a good man. He wants to know what
makes Twyla happy and how to be a “perfect partner” (243): “Because it was important for you to know all
of this, be all of this. You’d seen what
happens otherwise. You saw the damage, felt
the damage. You wanted to be healed by
love” (242).
As I was reading the book, I could not but find similarities between
Victor and Donald Trump. Besides his
traits already mentioned, Alex speaks of her father’s “sexualization of the
female form” (107) and his nefarious professional associates “in expensive
suits, handcuffed, heads down, off to jail” (109). I wondered whether the book was an examination
of the relationship between Donald and Melania; certainly, her loyalty, like
that of Barbra’s, leaves some people confused.
The analogy doesn’t work perfectly, however, because Alex and Gary are certainly
not like the sycophantic Trump children.
The book is not uplifting, but there are some glimpses of hope. Some peripheral characters are
developed: an elderly man in a
wheelchair, a trolley conductor, a ferry worker, a coroner. They do not have easy lives but they seem
like decent people who may recognize the importance of being “a little kinder
at the end of the day to the ones they loved” (273). The novel also ends with a conversation
between Victor’s two granddaughters which suggests their focus is not on money
and objects but on family.
Anyone looking for an action-packed book should stay clear of this
one. This is very much a character novel. It may have you examining your own choices
and how they’ve been shaped by your parents and how you’ve shaped your
children.
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