November Surprise

No, I’m not talking about the election results—they were a shock, a blow.

The surprise here is the slow, unfolding pleasure of reading Lori Ostlund’s novel, After the Parade.

But, in fact, the two are connected. In the past weeks, as I have felt overwhelmed and shattered at Trump’s election, I have retreated into reading—maybe denial, maybe a way to escape the awfulness of the election and the endless chatter from pundits on why things went wrong. The book I had at hand was After the Parade. I disappeared into the novel. And what solace it turned out to be. A reminder that decency and complexity and forgiveness do matter.

As I’ve written before, increasingly, I give up more quickly on books that disappoint; there’s just not enough time. And, also increasingly, I become irritated with bad editing and bloated prose (definitely related), lazy plotting, pedestrian style. So, I was prepared to commit After the Parade to the library giveaway pile after a few pages. But I persisted, out of loyalty to my current book group, which had chosen the book for our December meeting. Whew! Good-girl behavior pays off for a change!

The basic story is simple. It’s about leaving and being left, about the impact of abandonment on others, on oneself.

As the book opens, Aaron Englund is packing a few household goods in a U-Haul, preparing to leave Walter, his lover of 20 years. Aaron struggles to sleep before his departure, but finally relents and creeps off in the hours before dawn, heading for San Francisco and a new, solitary life.

Decades before when Aaron was five, his mother Delores had left him in much the same way, sneaking off into the night, leaving no note, no explanation. Aaron knew his mother was deeply unhappy, knew that she’d been institutionalized after the accidental death of her husband, a brutal abusive policeman. Still, despite this awareness, Aaron was a child then, abandoned, dependent on the charity of neighbors to raise and care for him.

The book toggles back and forth between scenes of Aaron’s childhood and his adult life, working as an ESL teacher in San Francisco. This familiar structure can feel contrived, but in After the Parade, it works. The connection between childhood trauma and present-day dysfunction emerges slowly and makes sense.  The reader thinks, “Oh, that’s why Aaron feels invisible, anxious…”

It’s not a straight line, though. The book is studded with dozens of scenes that work almost as short stories; some are sad, some are funny, especially the stories of the ESL students.  In an interview with Richard Russo, included in the book, Ostlund explains why she chose the non-linear structure: “…I was trying to mimic the way that memory works, particularly in times of transition or upheaval, when everything you see or hear triggers thoughts of the past, and those memories often come to you in fragments.”

Many anecdotes in the novel explore Aaron’s relationships with “misfits,” people who, in some way like him, are viewed as “other,” people who are misunderstood and reviled by society. Because he accepts these people, he can begin to accept himself, flaws and all. Other relationships, such as with Walter’s sister Winnie,  offer him a combination of unconditional love and tough-talk wisdom.

Over time, Aaron comes to acknowledge his rage at his most profound abandonment—his mother’s deliberate disappearance—and, at some level, to forgive her. As the ever-accepting and ever-wise Winnie comments, “Sometimes, the most you can do is save yourself.”

But this richly textured novel also suggests that forgiveness is the way to save yourself.