Historical December 1985 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Men and Angels, by Mary Gordon (Random House, 1985), is beautifully written with lovely rhythm and metaphors as well as fine characterizations.
The main character is Anne Foster, a thirty-eight-year-old with a PhD. in art history from Harvard.
Her husband is on a year sabbatical in France, while she is writing a catalogue for a major exhibition of an early twentieth century painter, Caroline Watson (who sounds like Mary Cassatt). Caroline Watson has been dead for forty-five years but Jane Watson, the wife of Caroline’s illegitimate only son, is the living priestess of Caroline’s work. Jane confesses to Anne that she never loved Steven, Caroline’s son, but married him so “I could have his mother for my mother.” She said that “between the two of us we crushed that poor boy to the ground.” Steven was an alcoholic and committed suicide at age eighteen. Anne has two young children and has hired a twenty-year-old, live-in sitter. Laura. the baby-sitter, goes around with a strange half smile on her face all the time.
She always carries a bible with her and is obsessed with religion.
The fact that she communes with spirits could account for the half smile. Anne has an aversion to her and tries to compensate for it.
However, her true feelings become apparent when she over reacts in a cruel and terrible way when Laura makes a mistake. Laura has had a background of rejection; her own mother said, “As far as I’m concerned my daughter has been dead for years.” Anne’s husband, Michael, comes home for a visit and she realizes he has been having an affair but does not discuss it with him.
When he leaves, she finds herself attracted to an electrician who comes to her house to do some work.
He has a sick wife and a young son.
Although he is a warm, friendly man, he puts out dishonest sexual signals so that when Anne takes the first step and makes a sexual overture, he becomes rude—saying that he did not think she was that kind of woman.
He refuses to finish the wiring job unless she is out of the house.
In spite of all this, Anne is a good wife and really loves her husband and children.
When she speaks of her children, Anne says that she would die for them in an instant—it would not be hard.
She says that mother love is the strongest kind of love and that it knits up blood but it knows nothing and it can keep nothing back.
In conclusion, it must be observed that the theme of the book is motherhood and the tragic results of the lack of mother love.
Her previous novels, Final Payments and the Company of Women, were in the world of Catholicism, but this novel moves out of that parochialism.
This is not an escapist novel and I would recommend it only to those who want to engage their intelligence and humanity.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, December 1985.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1985_12.pdf, printed page(s) 7; PDF page(s) 7.
