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What I'm Reading

 A novel I like very much is "The Good House," by Ann Leary. Ms. Leary is married to Denis Leary, and she wrote about that marriage for the NYTimes, for a column that later became a Tina Fey chapter in Amazon Prime's "Modern Love."


Ann Leary has at least two literary interests. She enjoys stories of alcoholism, so she is drawn to John Cheever and to "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne." Additionally, Leary likes a sinister atmosphere; she lists "Rebecca" and "Mr. Ripley" among her favorite novels. 

So--no surprise--Leary's breakout book, "The Good House," has a charismatic, high-functioning alcoholic at its center. Hildy Good is around sixty, and she has attempted rehab, but at night, alone, she works her way through many bottles of wine. This arrangement seems to sustain Hildy, until it doesn't. A troubled new family arrives in town, and some people threaten to destroy Hildy's business, and suddenly the drinking reaches a crisis point.

We understand what Hildy could lose: her livelihood (tied to her big-deal real estate business), her connection with her grandchildren, even her freedom (if her DUIs get worse and worse). At the same time, we understand the force of Hildy's rationalization: This is a very smart, very cunning liar, and she has persuaded herself she has things under control. Following Hildy is like following late-career Whitney Houston: You like this person, and also you have your heart in your throat, because all is clearly not well.

Given that Hildy is a "town staple," she has access to many houses in her coastal Massachusetts community, and she narrates the stories of a marriage on the rocks, a family struggling with the demands of autism, and a family responding to a late-in-life Christopher Plummer-in-"Beginners" gay-secrets revelation. ("My husband just told me he was needing to spend more and more time on the road, visiting those antiques shows....")

I really liked Leary's insights into messy lives, her way of animating a Gothic coastal town (small-town scandals are the best), and her way of calling attention to questions people face in their fifties and sixties. (This is a book about grown-ups.) Finally, I liked the thrilling conclusion--which had more action than your average literary-novel ending, and which kept me guessing, in suspense, for several pages.

I found this book because Frank Bruni has discussed it in print; also, the book recently became a Sigourney Weaver movie.

I'm looking forward to picking up Leary's "The Children"--a more recent novel--sometime soon.
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