When we set about writing A Dream Across Time we thought we were just writing a story, a work of fiction. What we found we had done was to convey the underlying reality of the Caribbean, or at least our part of the Caribbean. We came to see that often the best way to convey reality is in fiction. In fiction one experiences a person, a life, a place etc. in ways that cannot occur in a textbook.
Recently I read another book which confirmed this perspective about fiction. When we were at BEA in New York my wife gathered up a number of ARCs. Among them was What Do You Do All Day? by Amy Scheibe. It is due out in hardback in October from St. Martin's Press. I had not planned to do book reviews on this blog. But this book deserves comment.
What Do You Do All Day? caught me immediately. It is extremely well written and grabbed my sense of humor. It is set in Manhattan and the heroine, Jennifer, is among the well to do. Perhaps she could be dismissed as a whiner who has some neurotic inability to cope with privilege. She has two great kids even if the younger, Max, can be hard to take. But her daughter, Georgia, gets invited to fantastic parties and is in a very, very exclusive school. Oh yes, she loves her husband and he loves her. And he makes really good money. To die for some might say.
To die from, or at least wither from, is more to the point. What I found in Jennifer's story is what I found in doing psychotherapy with women for thirty years. What happens to her as a person is happening to women all over the country. It doesn't matter if its Rocky Mount or Flint.
I always have to steel myself when I say this but a lot of the problem started when women got more and more opportunities. I hate it when conservatives jump on that statement to justify neanderthal positions. But it is true. But it is equally true that change for women was essential but leads to discomfort and upset. The change was long overdue and the work continues. Maybe some day we might actually get an ERA.
Years ago in my office I began to see women wrestling with issues related to things such as turning thirty. It wasn't appearance stuff, it was what to do with her life that was typically at issue. Gradually the real issue came into focus. "You can have it all" the media blared. Marshall got it wrong. The media isn't the message. The media is the monster.
I don't think I have to go into what "all" means. We all know by now. In Amy Scheibe's book Jennifer had a terrible case of this agony. Her privilege didn't matter. She shared the same set of conflicts and agonies that the mother does in Little Rock. The things she says in her head about her children and everyone else are funny precisely because it is what women say to themselves in their heads but feel they can't say out loud. Amy lets women shout them in the form of a novel. We laugh because of our conflict and normal parental ambivalence about our children and even our lives of privilege.
What Do You Do All Day? is a wonderful book, even important and I don't mean to impunge it by saying it is also a textbook. If I taught a class on marital relationships, women's roles today or even just an ordinary intro psych class this would be a chosen textbook. It conveys the reality of women's lives today better than any ordinary text could. What women "must" do and "should" do threaten to crush them. In the end Jennifer does what women do at the end of therapy. She sorts her priorities and comes to terms emotionally with the things she wants. To hell with what the media is saying are musts for her children and her. She takes out of it all what she wants and does with it what she wants.
Ladies. Get to the bookstore in October and buy this book. It is a mirror for your life. Enjoy it as a really well written story. But also see it as reality for what is happening to women no matter where they live. Then after you have shared the insights with your women friends buy it for Christmas for your husband, boyfriend, significant other. Tell him that if her ever wants to have sex again he must read this book and understand it.
Guys. Get to the bookstore in October and buy this book. Read it and understand it and then give it to the woman in your life as an indication of support for her.
Having said all that I get back to my basic point. Fiction often offers a clearer view of reality than any other form of written word.

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