{"id":24179,"date":"2019-08-30T12:43:25","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=24179"},"modified":"2019-08-17T16:01:39","modified_gmt":"2019-08-17T20:01:39","slug":"kate-atkinson-on-modern-romance-and-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/30\/kate-atkinson-on-modern-romance-and-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"Kate Atkinson on modern romance and marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Indulging in a mystery for this cruise… From Big Sky<\/a><\/em> by Kate Atkinson<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was good at what she did\u2014acrylics, gels, shellac, nail art\u2014and was proud of the attention she gave to her job, even if trade was sparse. It was the first thing she\u2019d ever done that didn\u2019t involve selling her body in one way or another. Marriage to Tommy was a financial transaction too, of course, but to Crystal\u2019s way of thinking, you could be lap dancing for the fat sweaty patron of a so-called gentlemen\u2019s club or you could be greeting Tommy Holroyd with a peck on the cheek and hanging his jacket up before laying his dinner before him. It was all part of the same spectrum as far as Crystal was concerned, but she knew which end of it she preferred. And, to quote Tina Turner, what does love have to do with it? Fig all, that was what. There was no shame in marrying for money\u2014money meant security. Women had been doing it since time began. You saw it on all the nature programs on TV\u2014build me the best nest, do the most impressive dance for me, bring me shells and shiny things. And Tommy was more than happy with the arrangement\u2014she cooked for him, she had sex with him, she kept house for him. And in return she woke up every morning and felt one step further away from her old self. History, in Crystal\u2019s opinion, was something that was best left behind where it belonged.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Modern physical appearance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crystal was hovering around thirty-nine years old and it took a lot of work to stay in this holding pattern. She was a construction, made from artificial materials\u2014the acrylic nails, the silicone breasts, the polymer eyelashes. A continually renewed fake tan and a hairpiece fixed into her bleached-blond hair completed the synthetic that was Crystal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A man whose daughter has just finished high school…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was grinding toward fifty and for the last three months he had been living in a one-bedroom flat behind a fish-and-chip shop, ever since Wendy turned to him one morning over his breakfast muesli\u2014he\u2019d been on a short-lived health kick\u2014and said, \u201cEnough\u2019s enough, don\u2019t you think, Vince?,\u201d leaving him slack-mouthed with astonishment over his Tesco Finest Berry and Cherry. Ashley had just set off on her gap year, backpacking around Southeast Asia with her surfer boyfriend. As far as Vince could tell, \u201cgap year\u201d meant the lull between him funding her expensive private school and funding her expensive university, a remission that was nonetheless still costing him her airfares and a monthly allowance.<\/p>

As soon as Ashley had fledged, on an Emirates flight to Hanoi, Wendy reported to Vince that their marriage was dead. Its corpse wasn\u2019t even cold before she was internet dating like a rabbit on speed, leaving him to dine off fish and chips most nights and wonder where it all went wrong. (Tenerife, three years ago, apparently.) \u201cI got you some cardboard boxes from Costcutter to put your stuff in,\u201d she said as he stared uncomprehendingly at her. \u201cDon\u2019t forget to clear out your dirty clothes from the basket in the utility room. I\u2019m not doing any more laundry for you, Vince. Twenty-one years a slave. It\u2019s enough.\u201d This, then, was the return on sacrifice. You worked all the hours God gave, driving hundreds of miles a week in your company car, hardly any time for yourself, so your daughter could take endless selfies in Angkor Wat or wherever and your wife could report that for the last year she had been sneaking around with a local caf\u00e9 owner who was also one of the lifeboat crew, which seemed to sanction the liaison in her eyes. (\u201cCraig risks his life every time he goes out on a shout. Do you, Vince?\u201d Yes, in his own way.) It clipped at your soul, clip, clip, clip.<\/p>

He had trudged through his life for his wife and daughter, more heroically than they could imagine, and this was the thanks he received. Couldn\u2019t be a coincidence that \u201ctrudge\u201d rhymed with \u201cdrudge.\u201d He had presumed that there was a goal to be reached at the end of all the trudging, but it turned out that there was nothing\u2014just more trudging.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Despite being 67, Atkinson is familiar with Internet app culture:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Craig, the lifeboat man, had been jettisoned apparently in favor of the smorgasbord of Tinder.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The book is consistent with the Real World Divorce<\/a><\/em> section on England<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf only I\u2019d listened to my poor mother,\u201d Wendy said as she itemized the belongings he was allowed to take with him. Wendy who was getting so much money in the settlement that Vince barely had enough left for his golf-club fees. \u201cBest I can do, Vince,\u201d Steve Mellors said, shaking his head sadly. \u201cMatrimonial law, it\u2019s a minefield.\u201d Steve was handling Vince\u2019s divorce for him for free, as a favor, for which Vince was more than grateful. Steve was a corporate lawyer over in Leeds, and didn\u2019t usually \u201cdabble in divorce.\u201d Neither do I, Vince thought, neither do I.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Now that regular novels are mostly about LGBTQIA characters and people with glamorous urban jobs, maybe mystery novels will end up being the best record of cisgender heterosexual working class life in the 21st century? Certainly they have always covered people in social classes ignored by writers of typical literary novels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More: Read Big Sky<\/a><\/em> (or start with the first book in the series, Case Histories<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related:<\/p>\n\n\n\n