(advance reader's edition)
Something I always seem to forget when I am sick or depressed is that I find narrative healing. So while I was spending a week fevered and coughing, I couldn't manage to read any of my New Yorkers. Why didn't I try a novel at the very start?
Finally I picked up Meier's, a reader's edition that I came into possession of somewhere along the line. It's about a middle-aged woman who leaves her teaching job in NYC when she is recruited for a new project at Amherst. She seems to have no spontaneity, no rich inner life, and yet there is already a promise of it, when she begins by buying this ramshackle Victorian house near campus. She gets drawn into a world of color and possibility, dragged slowly by her handyman - if such a term really gets at his talent for not only fixing a house, but unearthing its true potential - and her officemate. And a supporting cast of characters. Joy is, what? I think 48, when the novel opens, but she blossoms almost like a teenager, finding that there is strength in vulnerability, and freedom in tying yourself to a community.
Joy grows into herself in ways both expected and not, and loose ends maybe don't knot as nicely as one might like. But this book was a lovely break from my life, and even from the West Coast. And it made for a good reminder that life doesn't necessarily work on a schedule, and that maybe I don't need to worry so much about missing my chances or running out of time. We grow when we are ready to grow.
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