MADreads

Just a little slip

September 25th, 2009 Lisa - Central

I think it was back in February that I swore off books that dealt with grieving, but I slipped off the wagon.  It’s not really my fault…my book group selected Goldengrove by Francine Prose for our next read.  Unfortunately for my resolution, this novel was good enough to encourage further slippage….

Goldengrove introduces us to Margaret and her younger sister, the narrator, Nico.  Margaret is the more beautiful, bohemian, worshipped older sister to the more analytical, scientific, pudgy 13-year-old Nico.  And because Margaret has Nico wrapped around her finger; Nico plays decoy for Margaret’s trysts with her boyfriend Aaron.  We meet them while they float on a rowboat in the lake outside their house in the Berkshires on a promising early spring evening.  Before the sun sets, Margaret is dead.  Her undiagnosed heart ailment kills her after she dives into the lake.

Of course her death shatters Nico’s family.  Her parents, hippies in the old days, inherited the family’s summer house by the lake.  Henry, who runs his bookstore, the Goldengrove of the title, loses himself in a book he’s writing about end-of-the-world stories of other cultures.  Daisy buries herself in a haze of drugs.  So neither of them notice when Nico begins to hang around with Aaron.

At first, the two bond over the loss of Margaret, feeling they’ve finally found someone that understands how they feel.  They secretly get together to talk about Margaret and their bottomless sorrow.  But as Nico starts dropping weight due to her emotional state and starts looking like Margaret, their connection escalates into a sexual attraction.  Poor Nico struggles to navigate the possibility of very early sex, and equally, losing her own identity.  Frequently measured against Margaret prior to her death, Nico finds it almost as easy to slip into her sister’s personality as it is for her to slip into Margaret’s favorite t-shirt.  Hooked on old movies, thanks to Margaret, Nico realizes what’s happening when she sees Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo for the first time.

Prose has an intriguing character in Nico, though sometimes she seems older than her 13 years.  I couldn’t help but like her.  This is a rich little book that is more than just the story of the death of a sister.  There are allusions to poetry, music and film.  An examination of the process of healing.  The slow emergence of a new person as Nico finally navigates her loss.  It was definitely worth the slide off the wagon.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction, Young Adult