The Post-birthday World by Lionel Shriver

Character is destiny. Or, so we would like to believe. When we read or watch stories, we expect that the choices and actions of the characters will have a certain inevitability. Reading Madame Bovary, we look to fit the adultery with her circumstances and her character. Given Flaubert's drawing of her, given who she is, in terms of character, time and space, of course she does what she does.


Lionel Shriver's The Post-birthday World is a novel about an adultery and it's alternative that challenges this notion. An expatriate American book illustrator living in London, Irina is involved in an outwardly stable and basically sound relationship with her fellow expatriate Lawrence who works at a think-tank.They are a rather perfect couple. They may not be technically married (Lawrence looks down on such 'formalities'), but they have achieved something. In Irina's estimation, they have accomplished "nine years of mutual devotion." They nurture each other. They are comfortable. They share a happy little home where they share days marked by comforting routines, shared rituals.

Then one night, when Lawrence is out of town, Irina takes a mutual friend, world famous snooker player Ramsey Acton, out on his birthday. She and Ramsey drink a bit too much, they smoke something, and suddenly Irina finds herself alone in Acton's basement snooker lounge and sorely tempted. In a moment, she finds she wants nothing other in the world than to kiss Ramsey. Passionately.

At this point, Shriver divides her story into two strands with alternating chapters. In the one strand, Irena succumbs to temptation. In the other, she remains faithful. Both stories are convincing, almost equally so.

As one might expect, the act/non-act serves as a pivot of sorts. After passionately kissing in the one, Irina and Ramsey set off on a torrid affair. With plenty of regret, guilt and shame, Irena ends up leaving Lawrence and taking up with Ramsey, joining him on the competitive snooker tour. In the other, she sticks with Lawrence, and although she always wonders what she passed up, she's essentially grateful that she was able to resist temptation. Until, one dark day she discovers....

After forking, the two story strands mirror each other: while they differ on the larger plot elements (Irina leaves in the one, stays in the other) and a host of key facts, the two strands share a remarkable amount in terms of details, scenes and settings. Of course, none of these elements ever mirror exactly. Irina's take on a person, event or setting differs markedly depending on whether she's the Irina whose taken up with Ramsey or the Irena whose remained with Lawrence. Thus, the first chapter of the affair story opens with Lawrence returning home the night after the passionate kiss, and with "the rattle of the key in the lock, Irina felt her pulse in her teeth." In the story where Irina resists temptation, the corresponding chapter opens: "To Irina's mind, it was the most underrated of symphonies: the jingle of the ring, the hard rasp, the clip of the bolt widthdrawing, opening sesame." In the strand where she's betrayed him, Irina finds Lawrence's use of her first and middle name, Irina Galina, "a grating singsong, as if she were an adorable Muppet on Sesame Street and not a grown woman." Converserly, for the other, faithful Irina, while she remembers hating the name as a child (as did the Unfaithful Irina), "she now associated it with his voice" and remarks his having converted a hated nickname "first to a joke, and then....to joy."

While different sides of Irina emerge in the differing stories,the two sides that emerge don't openly contradict each other. In both strands, Irina stays essentially the same. While the unfaithful Irina worries about "feeling...unrecognizable to myself," nothing occurs in either story that doesn't make sense. Naturally, the act changes her. But, at some level, Irina seems fully capable of either action. Both seem equally plausible paths and neither action seems out of character. Shriver doesn't call into question her character, her virtue.


Instead, the question which haunts the book is which Irina made the "right" choice? What was gained and lost by staying? What was gained or lost by leaving? Shriver teases out this question through the entire five hundred pages of her book, right up to the end. Far from unequivocally answering it, she instead provocatively confuses the issue.


Nevertheless, it is hard to resist the feeling that the Irena who leaves gains a great deal more than Shriver's faithful version of Irina. {If you intend to read the book, stop reading here, for from here on I will be referring to the end of one strand of Shriver's story}. It is never entirely an open and shut case, but the Irena who leaves finds something in Ramsey she's never encountered. Her affair with him transforms her, brings her to an awareness of sides of herself of which she was unaware. She comes to see him as her "good."

Just after leaving Lawrence, Irina finds herself on a train, headed to a snooker tournament in Bournemouth where she intends to declare her part with Ramsey. Traveling alone on the train, she is plagued by all sorts of doubts and moral qualms. However, when she gets to Bournemouth, Shriver describes how Irina "emerged from the cocoon of her carriage." She has found wings, throws aside doubt, albeit temporarily, and confesses that, "in Ramsey's arms, her attraction to this remarkable snooker player...not only seemed "good," made her "feel good," but seemed an attraction to The Good- to an absolute that made all life worth living, rejection of which would be both morally reprehensible and inhuman."

Ramsey basically fascinates Irena at a very primitive level; her love for him resides largely in her body. Irina enthuses over his having "one of those rare figures that looked completely normal naked- sound, right, whole...[his]burnt-sugar smell was bewitching, and sometimes she would nestle down for a distilled whiff at the base of his neck like sniffing a hot oven ajar." To her mind, "[his body]designed to satisfy Irina McGovern's personal, quixotic aesthetic."

There is a dark side to this. Her fascination partakes of a self-destructive flavor. Irina fears "it was entirely possible she would never want to do anything else but slide in and out of bed with Ramsey...for the rest of her life." Rightfully or wrongly, Irina can't but find this shallow, and her behavior is not in keeping with her notion of who she wants to be. It reveals a part of herself to herself, and she finds the self-revealation "a little bit grim." Still, the Irina who runs after Ramsey has found something.

There are costs to leaving, some bigger than others. She and Lawrence had achieved a domesticity. They had made a home full of comforting places and rituals. The faithful Irina feels she knows Lawrence, albeit almost to boredom. With Lawrence, she has security and she's not a woman to look lightly or derisively on safety.

Her infidelity costs her most dearly in terms of her self-esteem. After proving herself otherwise, Irena discovers that she had unconsciously prided herself on her loyalty and faithfulness to Lawrence. Perhaps without being conscious of it, she took satisfaction in thinking of herself as a decent person. After leaving him, without 'good' cause, she can't think of herself in this way. And, she regrets the irrevocable loss.

Moreover, while she felt "excluded" from Lawrence's world at times, the relationship provided her space, independence, allowing her to find her self. Lawrence took a genuine interest in her career. Perhaps arising from a certain level of analytical detachment, he has a fuller, more mature sense of Irina. She admits "Lawrence could remind her who she was." Ramsey has a single-minded, consuming attachment to his gamee and this seems to preclude his paying attention to much else. He admits, "[Lawrence] helped you with your work and suchlike, where I don't know no children's-book editors from pork pie." In the end, Irina fears that while "[Ramsey] been generous to include her so utterly in his world..[but]inclusion could slyly morph to occlusion."

Yet, Irina seems only capable of fully recognizing and valuing the contentment,the security, the freedom offered by Lawrence only after she's left him. The Irina who stays is unaware of the benefits of her partnership with Lawrence or else needs to make a conscious effort to acknowledge these blessings of being with Lawrence. She does so, but often by invoking an extreme and inverse harm. Faithful Irina is "flummoxed why anyone would exalt unremitting peril. What was dreary about being confident that on the average evening your partner would come home?"

Similarly, the faithful Irina can tell herself that she's been faithful, she's acted decently. However, this provides tepid comfort. It is hard to pat oneself on the back for 'not' doing something. The Irina who leaves labels herself "an unfaithful Hussy." The Irina who stays is grateful "for her own restraint," and, far from feeling virtuous, when she contemplates the infidelity she resisted only feels "a contrasting cleanliness."

Cleanliness is a rather negative virtue. It "refreshes" rather than satisfies. Moreover, 'faithful' Irina remarks, it "would have been more even more refreshing had she intended to tell [Lawrence] everything." Irina never tells Lawrence of her temptation for a reason. The temptation plants a seed, and what rises up in her mind comes to cast a shade over Lawrence and their relationship. Temptation opens her mind to possibilites foregone, and even though resisted, afterward, she seems more keenly aware of the lacks and faults of her relationship with Lawrence. Worse, her fantasies, her doubts, come to feel to her like a partial betrayal, a figurative if not literal infidelity. As Ramsey tells the faithful Irina late in her story, "there's different sorts of betrayal. And...all manner of desertions."

Most cruelly, Shriver deals the worse blow to the faithful Irina at the end of her story. Her fidelity is not met; Lawrence proves unfaithful to her. The reader discovers that in the two strands, Irina and Lawrence serve as rough mirror images of each other. In the one, Irina experiences being unfaithful while Lawrence is betrayed. In the other, these roles are reversed. And, by the very structure of the novel, with it's mirrored story strands, the bitter end to the faithful Irina's story hardly seems tacked on, or simply a misanthropic Shriver's gratuitously piling on the idea of fidelity.

In the end, the infidelity marking both stories is presented as a the logical product of Lawrence and Irina's relationship. Given the terms of their "alliance" (a term Irina uses shortly after Lawrence admits he's been unfaithful), transgression is bound to occur, and it is never a question of whether but of who and when. AT best, their bond is ill-equipped to resist temptation. At worst, Shriver suggests, it almost welcomes it.

Irina and Lawrence's relationship prior to the temptation appears inviting. It is open. It is nurturing. It is free of jealousy. They don't fight much, and very seldom get involved in knock-down-drag-out cage matches. They know each other and are confident in this knowledge. Thus, they both trust the other implicitly.

Of course, these pluses prove to come at a cost and are for the most part the product of Irina and Lawrence's weaknesses and foibles. The two give each other a lot of space, a great deal of privacy, however, most often they do so out of fear. Lawrence adores Irina to the point of piety, or reverence. Shortly after kissing Ramsey, Irina notes that if Lawrence sense anything wrong with her, he is likely to do his best to ignore it: "Lawrence avoided the main thing like the plague." As does the faithful Irina. When Lawrence fails to tell her something indicating a possible infidelity, she avoids bringing it up. While "his omiission grew tumorous...she would brush up against it like a lump on her breast in the shower...[and]as many a woman has done to her peril, she told herself it was nothing."

Both characters oddly ping-pong between feeling they know the other to the point of boredom and not knowing the other at all. Both seem to be involved in a weird dynamic. Both are controlling. In trying to know Lawrence, Irina seeks to 'fix' him with limiting snapshots, or sketches, figuratively speaking. Naturally, given the complexity and unpredictablitiy of anybody,these snapshots periodically fail to map the reality. When they do so, rather than see them as good but imprecise guides, Irina concludes she doesn't know Lawrence at all.

Lawrence and Irina's relationship seems wary, perhaps incapable, of passion. Shriver suggests the lukewarm temperature of their bond is its fatal flaw. As she draws the relationship, it's not a matter of whether someone will stray, but simply when and who will fall prey first thanks to circumstance. And, thus again, infidelity and adultery are not products of character. Or, at best, only indirectly, insofar as Irina and Lawrence's character drives them to an especially adultery prone relationship.

This book is provocative. On almost any page, you will find a pithy and thoughtful aside or comment capable of generating an evenings thought and discussion. It's a meaty book, a densely detailed portrait of a relationship and the personalities that make it up. With it's penchant for aphoristic nuggets, it's concern with large, philosophical questions, and it's incredibly nuanced portraits, it delivers the pleasures of a George Eliot novel. However, while Shriver writes with a similar eloquence, she's a cynic. As much as anything else, chance seems to drive the actions of the characters, and in the end, both Irina's find themselves in remarkably similar circumstances at the end of their stories, despite the very different paths they chose. The two women attain different truths, but neither truth leads to their achieving a superior contentment, an obviously better mind-frame.

The Last Chicken in America by Ellen Litman

I grew up cherishing the idea of my ancestors having migrated here from Poland. Those around me never could furnish me with much in the way of details, or if they could, weren't really interested in doing so. Some probably just didn't think it was all that important a fact or story. Or, it was something they didn't want to remember or have remembered. They were American. Period. Perhaps in compensation, I've always been drawn to fiction that is focused on the experience.

Ellen Litman's Last Chicken in America linked set of short stories captures the experience of Russian Jews who come to a particular Pittsburgh neighborhood (Squirrel Hill) in the nineties. It provides vivid and carefully drawn detail on the emotional and psychological costs incurred by the move. Folks with all sorts of educational and occupational attainments back home are forced to work menial jobs. Isolated by language and culture from the larger world of their new home, they are often forced to rely on an all too small circle of other immigrants for companionship and help. Parents find themselves dependent on children for acts of simple survival and grown resentful as their children fell smothered. Often reading of all these costs, you wonder. Was it worth it?

Of course, the move wasn't always much of a choice. Many of the characters are Jewish and are fleeing. However, many of the characters seem to find their new home equal parts surprisse and disappointment. Their move has had effects they didn't anticipate. One character, lamenting the failed marriage of one set of friends and the hasty May-December marriage of another, remarks to her husband, "What is America doing to us Seryozha?" Seryozha replies, "Its not America. Its them."

Beyond immigration, Litman explores the pressures and attractions of assimilation. Several stories are Masha's, an ambitious, only daughter who looks to flee the conservative, gloomy mindset of her parents but fears she will never be American. As she puts it: "I watched CNN, I ate out, I read American books. But I lacked their boldness and fluency, their flippant resistance to gloom. My father said I'd never be quite like them."

Masha's thumbnail above of America is one of the appeals of immigrant lit. It always provides a mirror. However, these stories are better than that. They speak to universals. In a number of different ways, Litman's immigrants are folks who are negotiating common transfers. They are growing old. They are moving from childhood to adulthood. They are attempting to find their place in new marriages. Unless you're odd, you will see yourself. And, Litman's accounts are infused with compassion.

Because I could not wait for Death....

Martine Leavitt's meditative and charming YA novel, Keturah and Lord Death, not only takes death as its theme, but features him as a character, a romantic lead at that.

Yep, death's a Romeo in this odd mix of a book. To borrow Australian slang come across in Peter Carey's last novel, this book is a 'bitzer.' It's a bit of this and a bit of that and never any one thing entirely.

While ostensibly marketed to young adults, I wonder if it might not best be appreciated by adults. I can imagine many parents would be worried about their child's reading it. While it verges at times on allegory, it's clearly set in world resembling medieval England at the time of the plague, with numerous historically feasible details. Yet, it is off on many details and would afford a mediocre history lesson. What's more, that history lesson would be interrupted by bursts of romance clothed in prose more likely found in a good bodice-ripper than your standard historical novel. The cover doesn't mislead by any measure.

Quibbles aside, it is compulsively readable. Leavitt is a true craftswoman. Her sentences, her chapters, the novel are all well-crafted and shapely. Her lines often launch into lyrical, romantic sweeps.

Keturah is the teller of her tale. It is a campfire tale in which a 'fictional' Keturah wanders into the woods after a large, mysterious stag. She becomes hopelessly lost in the woods, and after three days in the woods Death, as in Lord Death, comes upon her. Keturah is not ready; waggish, Lord Death responds, "No one is ready." Keturah though actually manages to fend off death, at least for a day, by telling a story about a young girl who wanders into the wood, comes upon death. She begs him for more time so she might find and experience her true love. Lord Death is intrigued and wonders how the fictional Lord Death will respond to this, but Keturah refuse to tell him the end, till the next day. What's more, dubious of the stories notions of true love, Lord Death promises to give Keturah her life if she can find a true love before they meet next evening to conclude the story.

Thus, the Scherezade pattern of this book is established. For two more nights, Keturah manages to weave yet another unfinished thread into the story of and for her life. In the intervening days, she searches her small, backwater of a village in hopes of finding her true love. There is also another subplot where Keturah, acting on information given her by Lord Death [pretty good source] works to convince the local lord to upgrade the town so as to avert the onset of plague. This little subplot kind of just got in the way, but.....

When asked to describe how it feels to die, Lord Death claims, "You experience something similar every day...It is like every morning when you wake up." However, he then adds, "But to know that is never enough." This book is an attempt to know death; to the extent it's cognitively possible, it is an exercise in imaginatively trying it on. According to the afterword, when she was a child, Leavitt's sister died at the age of eleven from Cystic Fibrosis. The book is an adult's imaginative attempt to walk with this child-sister on "the long journey dying must be for a child to make alone."

So, while Lord Death is frightening, Keturah's encounter presents other sides. He provides benefit. Her nightly encounters with him lead Keturah to see the wonder of the everyday and value it more. He drives her to find her own story, to find her own heart. In a weird, paradoxical reversal, at the end, Keturah find her heart is set on Lord Death; he proves to be the true love for whom she yearned when she begged him for more time at the beginning of the book. In explanation,she confesses:

...I could not touch [others'] happinesss, could not hold it. It was a dream and not real. What was real was the sense that in this life I had never quite been satisfied, had never quite been satisfied, had never long been at peace, had never loved or been fully loved as I longed to be.

I'm not sure that I find this reversal, this somewhat sudden awareness, entirely convincing. Keturah hardly seems a gloomy sort. She loses both parents at a young age, but is raised by grand-parents who "drew [her] into their circle of uncommon love and established in her forever a desire to have such a thing for herself someday."

Being a speculative sort myself, I note but am much less troubled by some of the odd little metaphysical conceptions that mark Keturah's thinking. Many of these don't seem to fit the ostensible setting of the story; I honestly wonder if anybody thought like this at the "time" of the book. Granted, Leavitt leaves the time kind of nebulous, but it does certainly seem to be England in the Middle Ages, and some of the characters' thinking struck discordant note.

For instance, Keturah speaks of her "soul's heart" and her "living heart" and implies that if her "living heart" fails to encounter her true love during life, he soul's heart will " long and ache and mourn for eternity." Grandmother offers an equally odd variant on psychological conception when she advises Keturah, "the soul...longs for its mate as much as the body. Sad it is that the body be greedier than the soul." However, her world-view has Christian elements to it. At night she offers prayerful petitions to God and between each petition conceeds, "Thy will."
Yet, she's not exactly Christian in the end either, claiming that "One is greater than death...and that is life."

I quibble a bit. Then as now, folks have head and heart beliefs, mix and confuse orthodox religions and canonical, established types of knowledge with heresies and irrational elements. However, it just seems strange that in a story set at some time in the medieval ages, examining the idea of death, not a single character ever speaks of it from a Christian point of view.

Still, read this book. For the writing. For the romance. It attempts something difficult and succeeds to some degree: while slyly entertaining the reader, it forces him to confront death.