#738 Danny In Transit- David Leavitt
This is a study in psychology. A man demanding to have a “proper” marriage with defined male/female roles comes to the realization after having a child that he is homosexual. The wife, already a little in need of mental therapy, loses it. She has a nervous breakdown and literally tears her own hair out. Danny, the only child, normally very self-reliant turns into a high maintenance situation with a hair-trigger reaction to tantrum.
The author does a great job flushing out each persons psychological tendencies in such a traumatic family break-up. It is also a test for the reader in which character you feel more sympathy for. Clearly none of this is the child’s fault so he had automatic sympathy. But what about the mother who is another clear victim, trying her best to be a mother in the face of her breakdown and being honest about not being able to handle life? Or perhaps the father, who is forced by a patriarchal expectation and an uber-machismo career to be something he is not, and then when he finds a road to freedom it causes so much harm to others. Stay in a cage and try to hold together a lie, or be honest and hope to weather the chaos?
Children are the only ones here that have carte blanche excuse for being selfish, but they are also the most resilient. Good story.
Notable Passage: “Just never trust cleanliness. All the bad stuff—the really bad stuff—happens in clean houses, where everything’s tidy and nobody says anything more than good morning.”
No comments:
Post a Comment