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PARTISAN REVIEW
pressionism early on, and Yates's language is always cool and clean
and clear. It includes a few striking apen;:us about the sophistries of
social pressure ("one of the small misfortunes of being a rich girl ...
was that people would often exaggerate their pleasure when you
gave expensive gifts") and a couple of sensitive observations about
people desperately trying to seem unaffected . Yates puts us in the
soft spot of his characters' pride and evokes an air of free-floating
wistfulness by using "aching" a lot. But the rue in this book is not
pointed or particular enough to admit him to Fitzgerald's class. And
though the suburban party games in which sozzled Ivy alumni make
fools of themselves while questing for a vanished grace sound a little
like Cheever, they have none of that writer's silvery radiance. Bounc–
ing along without pressure or reflection, the narrative blandly sug–
gests that all things carry an equal weight. By and large, there is so
little pretension here that there seems hardly to be any intention.
A more alarming problem is that Yates handles his unlovely
and self-absorbed creations with such indulgent care that he seems
not to have forgiven, but merely to have overlooked, their brittle–
ness . In the paragraph introducing Sarah Garvey, who is supposed
to be the novel's most saintly character, the narrative rambles on
about how every man who meets her instantly begins "helplessly
imagining how her body looks naked and how she would feel in their
hands, and how she would smell and taste, and how her voice would
sound in the delirium of getting laid." In the next paragraph,
Michael himself registers his first impression of his second wife–
"perfect legs and ankles beneath a straight skirt; a trim little ass with
just enough curves to make you ache for it." Four pages after this
initial meeting, the two are in a motel room and "it was as if neither
he nor Sarah Garvey could be complete unless they were joined ."
Both the novel and its protagonist seem, in cahoots , to subscribe to a
somewhat narrow definition of a full-bodied character.
Ultimately, Yates's novel presents us with soulless lives imi–
tating art. Yes, it is sad that these people are so anxious to be liked ,
but it would be much sadder if they were actually likable. They are
not. Perhaps Yates is consciously trying to demonstrate that everyone
is shallow . But shallowness for 347 pages is itself trying. And are
people really so pallid and full of self-pity? Is life truly so barren of
grace and surprise? Is contemporary America honestly no more alive
than an Alan AIda movie? As a tough but (of course) sensitive truck–
driverly man
(!)
in her creative writing class tells Lucy about her
story, "All I'm trying to say is that I'm afraid I got a kind of who–
cares feeling out of this."
