Norumbega Park (2012)

Written by:  Anthony Giardina
Published by:  Picador
ISBN:  978-0-374-27867-0

Norumbega Park is the story of an American family whose four members fall into four distinct archetypes: the father the dreamer, the wife the door mat, the son the schemer, and the daughter the craven.  It begins in the 1960’s, with the dreamer falling in love with a storied house in the town of Newton, Massachusetts.  He pulls up the stakes of a comfortable suburban lifestyle to pursue his fancy of The American Dream by buying this house in a slimy deal that forcibly displaces its elderly occupant, dragging his family alongside so that they may ostensibly bask in the opportunity to flourish in the wake of his conviction.  And flourish they do, but not in any way that conforms to his expectations.

This is a novel that is largely without a plot, relying instead on using the four distinct archetypes to complement one another and evolve over a period of two and a half generations.  It is structured so that each character has a piece of a 5 chapter set, allowing ample room for a lot of introspection and self-discovery under a mixed set of circumstances, moving time forward and allowing things to happen as organically as possible.  The catalyst, of course, is the father’s decision to uproot his family to Norumbega in the first place, a risk wrought by his selfishness and pride and an unwarranted sense of entitlement.  He sees magic in the place, some kind of beauty that no one else can see.  And this is a theme that resonates with the motivations of all the family members as they pursue dreams all their own, blinded by their own wildly different–but selfish all the same–ambitions.

It’s a set up that sort of pays off.  Each character is interesting in his or her own way, but the balance of interest committed to by the author is rather uneven: a lot of time is devoted to the son’s traipses in New York, an obvious nod to Holden Caulfield’s adventures there.  But the daughter, a craven girl who wishes to hide away from the world by joining a convent, is sparse and subdued.  Big events, such as the deaths of auxiliary characters and really important life choices, are glossed over and told in flashback sequence, relying on the reader to play a game of ‘catch up’ in the lives of these abnormal normal people in the same manner the town gossip might pick apart the deviancy of the locals.  There’s some fun in that, but there’s also a kind of robbery of satisfaction that no amount of eloquent writing could ever restore.

In the end, things kind of peter out with no real resolution–just the procession of time and the change that brings, both in people and in the legacies they build.  It’s possible this is all intentional and the author wanted the reader to simply look up and think about his or her lifestyle, maybe to warn the reader that even the most benign actions can have consequences that begin as a ripple, but end as a wave.

B+

Choice Passages

“Sometimes I think I’m going to be very unhappy.”
“Why do you think that?”
“And you, you’re going to be fine.”
He didn’t challenge that.  He believed the same thing, most of the time.

–

He knew she was a little embarrassed by her own perfection.  He imagined her running past mirrors, dodging her own pride.  He also knew that lately she’d have been looking at herself more closely, in anticipation of this moment … turned on by herself.

–

What was it that Father Alfred had suggested?  Every day to make the decision all over again.  She would not think of that.  She would think only of what it might be like to be alone tonight in her cell, away from the names of the saints, the implied comparisons that must leave her wanting.  Alone in her cell, she would be free to become what she was–simply a woman conducting her life in a way that made sense.  Was that not enough?