Booksology How does Stewart O’Nan understand so deeply what it feels like to be an elderly woman?
O’Nan’s 19th novel, “Evensong,” follows half a year in the lives of Susie, Kitzi, Emily, and Arlene, four women in the twilight of life. They are the core members of the Humpty Dumpty Club, a large, loosely knit group of older women in Pittsburgh who look out for each other as their lives contract and their independence falters.
Directed by the highly organized Joan — she of the “highlighter and color-coded file folders” — the women run errands, pick up prescriptions, and groceries, drive people to medical appointments, and, eventually, visit them in the hospital and plan their funerals. This is more than volunteering; this is assuming responsibility, with spreadsheets and follow-up phone calls, and dropping everything, when necessary, to dash out the door, even on a holiday, even late at night.
The women know that while they are the ones helping now, the time will come when they will be the ones needing aid. Mostly widowed or otherwise single, with children living far away, they understand that “no one else was going to help them.”
The four are sustained by their duty, their church, their cats and dogs. Newly divorced Susie, “the baby of the group,” dips her toe into the dating pool, while the others look on with great interest. Kitzi takes care of her critically ill husband. And then there’s the widowed Emily — oh, what a delight to encounter Emily Maxwell again, and her prickly sister-in-law, Arlene, characters from three earlier O’Nan novels. With its ensemble cast and chapters that alternate among four points of view, “Evensong” is not as piercingly intimate as the masterful “Emily, Alone,” but in its breadth it might be wiser and more encompassing. It is about responsibility and community, written with gentle humor and empathy but not an ounce of sentimentality.
As the title suggests, music is at the heart of this book, and as the season turns from autumn toward Christmas, the women faithfully gather at their church for Evensong, for Sunday choir, for Lessons and Carols. Their faith — in God, in the future, in each other — is reflected in the gorgeous choral music, even as they bicker about the choices and versions.
Emily’s greatest fear is that she might have to move, one day, to assisted living, “the next to last stop.” Arlene, meanwhile, is slowly realizing that her memory is failing. She gets lost driving 2 miles; she forgets appointments; she falls asleep and leaves a pan on the stove. She tells no one about the fire, but scrubs and scrubs, until “The only way someone might suspect would be if they came over to visit her, but, as she rightly calculated, there was no danger of that happening.”
How can a novel about getting old, losing friends, growing frail, be anything but depressing? But in O’Nan’s hands it is buoyant and hopeful. These women are stoic; they are salt of the earth; they are stubborn and capable.
Emily understands that “after a point you outlived everyone who truly knew you.” You can give in, or press on. They press on.
Among those they are helping are Jean and Gene, two frail classical musicians who have become hoarders late in life and are tending dozens of cats. Gene’s funeral, when the time comes, is one of the most moving scenes in the book, a reminder that who we are at the end of life is not who we always were. Old age does not define us.
Comic relief comes in the form of Angus and Oscar, Emily’s dog and Joan’s cat; the chapters centered on them are delightful set pieces that add warmth and humor. But it is also clear that these animals are surrogate partners, surrogate children. Without them to fuss over and cuddle and talk to, the women would be utterly alone.
O’Nan’s novels range from the brilliant “Last Night at the Lobster,” about the closing of a Red Lobster restaurant, to “West of Sunset,” a fictionalized account of the last days of F. Scott Fitzgerald, to the harrowing “The Names of the Dead,” set during the Vietnam War. His novels are unexpected and very different from one another. But always, he is a master at quotidian details, a master at human emotion. Always, he writes with a huge and generous heart.
“Evensong” is tender and funny, poignant and true. The novel is a little miracle: here it is, life, on the page.
EVENSONG
By Stewart O’Nan
Atlantic Monthly Press, 304 pages, $28
Laurie Hertzel’s second memoir, “Ghosts of Fourth Street,” will be published in March. She teaches in the low-residence MFA program at the University of Georgia and lives in Minnesota.
