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A rediscovered author

November 3rd, 2008 Lisa - Central

For some reason I’ve avoided reading Ursula Hegi’s books since her brilliant Stones From the River.  I don’t know why, because I loved that book.  Maybe I thought they would all be set in Germany, or during the war, or something.  Thank goodness I decided to read The Worst Thing I’ve Done.  A story about a love triangle between 2 men and a woman, this is a terrific novel.

Annie, Mason, and Jake have known each other since infancy, and have grown up completely attached to each other.  But they also compete for each other’s attention, their relationships rife with jealousy and secrets.  Mercurial Mason gets the girl and marries Annie - seemingly the only way the three of them could stay friends.  On their wedding night, Annie’s father and very pregnant mother are killed in a car accident.  Annie’s sister Opal survives the accident, and the 3 friends agree to raise her together.  But this is all back story.  The first thing you learn in the book is that Mason has committed suicide.  He killed himself in Annie’s New England studio -she’s a collage artist - and therefore ruins the place for her.  So she moves in with her mother’s dearest friend, Aunt Stormy, on Long Island.

Hegi gives all the characters their own chapters, and the story unfolds as a collage.  Slowly the complex relationships become clear.  We learn from Mason what happened the night before his suicide.  We see how Opal deals with losing so many people in her early life.  And you see how each of the threesome deals with the interplay of attraction and jealousy until Mason pushes the wrong buttons and changes everything.  And we find out the worst thing they’ve all done.

Okay, I may be prejudiced in favor of this book.  I grew up on Long Island; the bulk of the story takes place in North Sea, a town on the South Fork of the Island.  Hegi elicits a magical, almost mystical, world of the oceanside through Aunt Stormy, a kind of natural naturalist.  Whenever she takes someone out in the kayak, she weaves an encyclopedic tale of the water and its inhabitants.  But besides all that, Hegi has done a masterful job of creating some very real and rich characters, and of excavating the themes of love, loss, tragedy, and loyalty.  Despite the tough emotional themes, this is a powerful and moving novel.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction