This is your life, Harriet Chance! A novel

Review by New York Times Review

IT'S BEEN MORE than 50 years since "This Is Your Life," the early reality show after which Jonathan Evison's new novel is named, aired the final episode of its initial television run. The concept of the program might seem quaint to the generation that grew up on the Internet - the host, Ralph Edwards, would surprise his guests (some celebrities, some not) with a retrospective of their lives, accompanied by special appearances from friends and family members out of their pasts. Now we have Facebook, which functions as a new "This Is Your Life" episode every time you log in. You don't need a host to narrate the most embarrassing moments of your high school career when you have old friends tagging you in pictures they've found at the bottom of some box and scanned. (Did my hair really look like that? Why did I ever think acid-washed jeans were cool?) Even if you've tried to forget periods of your life, via recreational drugs or intensive psychotherapy (or both), social media won't let you forget, no matter how much you want to. But it's not just the Internet, of course. Consider the title character of "This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!," Evison's fourth novel. Harriet is 78 and not inclined toward any technology of the past few decades. She lives in Washington State, in the house she used to share with her husband, Bernard, who has recently died after a rapid descent into dementia. She keeps herself busy with mundane errands, housework and occasional visits with her best friend, Mildred, and her feckless middle-aged children, Skip and Caroline. It's a bit of a dull life, but not necessarily a bad one. That changes when Harriet receives a phone call from a foundation informing her that Bernard, before he died, won an Alaskan cruise for two in a silent auction. "Oh, but dear, do I have to go?" she asks her husband, or more accurately his ghost. "Would you be hurt if I didn't? You know I'm not a traveler." But guilt gets the better of her, and she decides to go with Mildred. Her children are aghast. They've been told by Harriet's priest that she claims to get visits from Bernard, in the flesh, on an alarmingly regular basis. But she refuses to be dissuaded, even when Mildred bows out at the last minute. She boards the ship alone, blithely unaware of the news that lies in wait for her by way of a letter: Bernard may have had somebody else in mind all along as his travel partner on this cruise. "Only dimly is she aware of the pages scattering as they flutter to the carpet," Evison writes. "She believes in this moment that she's dying." Bernard's infidelity is only the first of many secrets to be disclosed in the novel. Another is that Harriet is not as alone on the boat as she had thought. The others come later, and they are terrible ones; they hit mercilessly like a sucker punch to the solar plexus. But it takes a while to get there. Evison's novel jumps back and forth in time, visiting Harriet at various ages in her life. The main plot, featuring Harriet at 78, sailing from Washington to the Alaska panhandle, is told in the third person; it's a straightforward, though never boring, narrative. These chapters are interspersed with ones narrated by an unnamed Ralph Edwards stand-in, an omniscient host addressing Harriet, recounting the days from her birth to her dotage. It seems random, but the host assures us it's not: "Yes, yes, we're all over the place again, pinballing across the decades, slinging and bumping our way through the days of your life, seemingly at random. And yes, pinball has come a long way since the Spot Bowler of your adolescence. They've added obstacles, pitfalls, bells, whistles, you name it. But look a little closer, Harriet, and you'll see there's a method to the madness, a logic to the game." It's a narrative strategy that could easily come off as gimmicky, but Evison avoids any hint of cheap artifice; this is an intricately structured novel that doesn't draw unnecessary attention to its own framework. That's not to say the narrator never mentions it - he explains the time jumps as the natural product of the way humans think: "Yes, we're getting ahead of ourselves again, but hey, it happens, Harriet. The reflective mind is a pinball, pitching and careening, rebounding off anything it makes contact with." (Evison is perhaps more fond of pinball metaphors than anyone since Pete Townshend.) The structure allows for a kind of slow burn, as we learn how Harriet's life has unfolded through the decades, for better and for worse (mostly worse). This is most evident when Evison chronicles Harriet's relationship with Bernard, initially presented as a stable, if unexceptional, marriage. "Yes, Harriet, for the next 50 years you'll eat what Bernard eats, vote how Bernard votes, love how Bernard loves and ultimately learn to want out of life what Bernard wants out of life," the narrator intones, unpromisingly. Having the narrator address Harriet could easily lend itself to a kind of preachiness, but Evison won't castigate Harriet for her life choices; his tone is compassionate even when it's tough, and he's never condescending. He's also unafraid to make the reader uncomfortable, particularly in the scenes detailing the last months of Bernard's illness, when he was filled with "infantile rage," beating Harriet, giving her "one black eye, which you attributed to the car door." THINGS GET EVEN DARKER from there, and Evison doubles down. "You fantasize about clubbing Bernard senseless like a harp seal," he writes. "Pushing him down stairs, in front of U.P.S. trucks, off of cliffs. ... It doesn't matter that you'll never act on these impulses, it doesn't matter that they're just aberrant manifestations of extreme frustration and grief, the sort of thing that any caregiving manual would caution you against, they are sick and unforgivable, and you hate yourself for these thoughts." The one constant in "This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!" is Evison's brutal honesty. It's an unrelentingly dark book, belied by its whimsical cover, all pastel blue-greens and bright yellow, and by the excitable exclamation point tacked on the end of the title. There are a few moments of comic relief, mostly courtesy of Kurt Pickens, a cruisegoer from Kentucky who befriends Harriet, though she's initially horrified by his sleeveless T-shirts and assertive novelty clothing. But Evison resists every neat resolution, every unearned epiphany. As fanciful as his prose can be - and it occasionally gets away from him - he's not afraid to depict the dark side of aging as it is, and not as we wish it were: "No, this is the worst thing in the world: reality. Trumper of hope, killer of faith." The result is a book that speaks to all of us, whether we're young enough to check Facebook 50 times a day, or old enough to have only a vague idea what the Internet is. The themes Evison presents - disappointment, delusion, redemption - are universal, and he deals with them beautifully in this wonderful novel. "Love grows quieter, Harriet, it's true," Evison writes. "People evolve, or they don't. Either way, they grow apart." The truth is sometimes hard to accept, but we have no choice but to do so. This is your life, Harriet Chance, but it's ours, too. 'This is the worst thing in the world: reality. Trumper of hope, killer of faith.' MICHAEL SCHAUB is a frequent contributor to NPR and The Los Angeles Times.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 14, 2015]

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Review by Booklist Review

With a tip of the hat to the 1950s game show This Is Your Life, Evison's droll portrait of 78-year-old Harriet Chance homes in on key incidents in the widow's life. As Harriet sets off on an Alaskan cruise, she is visited by the ghost of her dead husband, Bernard (their conversations are a comedic highlight), who held some dark secrets that, once revealed, inspire Harriet to seriously reevaluate her life. It turns out that she has some secrets of her own, which seriously impacted her relationship with her children, especially her deeply depressed daughter, who is still struggling with addiction and who unexpectedly shows up on the boat midway through the cruise. Whether describing Harriet's epic battle with a crab-leg dinner after imbibing too much wine or her tentative attempts to reach rapprochement with her daughter, Evison always depicts her with a great deal of compassion and a keen eye for the humorous detail. Both uplifting and melancholy, funny and thought-provoking, this entertaining read speaks directly to the importance of acceptance and healing.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2015 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Harriet Chance, a 78-year-old Seattle native, gets an unexpected phone call informing her that her husband, Bernard, now dead, had won a trip on an Alaskan cruise at a charity auction and failed to pick up his winnings. With the voucher set to expire, Harriet decides to go out of her comfort zone and bring a friend on the trip. The trip causes Harriet to question everything she thought she knew about her past and her relationships. Evison (The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving) chooses a second-person narrative to delve into the mind-set of Harriet, a woman who seems estranged from not only her close family (including favored but distant son Skip and her troubled recovering addict daughter Caroline) but from herself. The time line skips back in forth: from her wedding day at 22 as a pregnant bride, to her attempts to cast off her domestic duties and reenter the work force ("Look at you, Harriet Chance, so diligent, so fastidious in your attention to detail!"). Evison's voice is buoyant and cheeky as he unveils the deep traumas that form Harriet's sense of herself, but there are missteps-namely, a secondary narrative in which Bernard Chance risks being barred from a sketchily described afterlife to try to communicate with Harriet. Still, Evison succeeds in crafting a believable and gut-wrenching story, particularly Harriet's relationship with her daughter and their efforts to accept and love one another. Agent: Mollie Glick, Foundry Literary + Media. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Evison's (All About Lulu; The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving) newest novel is a romp back and forth through the life of Harriet Chance. Recently widowed, 79-year-old Harriet seems to have accepted that her deceased husband will be popping up to talk to her whenever he likes. Despite this condition, she sets off on an Alaska cruise, during which she's forced to confront a sudden and uncomfortable truth: her life has been lived under completely false pretenses. Evison takes the reader straight back to Harriet's birth, popping in and out of the past with an amusing flourish to explain to Harriet how things came to be this way, while the present Harriet tries to find her footing through the sudden arrival of her estranged daughter, who has more revelations of her own. Verdict Evison writes a quick-paced family drama, with enough lighthearted enthusiasm to soften the serious blows he delivers to our poor heroine and his readers. This title will be particularly appealing to fans of quirky, dysfunctional families and authors Maria Semple and Jami Attenberg. [See Prepub Alert, 4/6/15; a LibraryReads September pick.]-Mara Dabrishus, Ursuline Coll. Lib., Pepper Pike, OH © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Insightful, richly entertaining look at a woman who, very late in the game, finds that life remains full of surprises. It's not often that a male writer gets inside the head of a female character without botching it somehow; Jim Harrison pulled it off in Dalva and maybe Daniel Defoe in Moll Flanders. Evison joins that short list with a yarn that, like his Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving (2012), seems a bit of a comic detour from his more serious earlier work (West of Here, 2011, etc.). The eponymous lead is wrestling with the fact that her husband of many decades has passed away, though she keeps seeing him; as the book opens, she's working hard to convince her priest that "Bernard still lingered somehow in the earthly realm," and certainly Bernard, "five decades of familiarity imprinted on her memory like a phantom limb," continues to exercise some influence over his wife when she learns that he's booked an Alaskan cruise for her, seemingly from beyond the grave. Naturally, Bernard haunts the halls of the cruise shipbut then, other unexpected persons turn up there, too, players in a seriocomic series of turns in which she discovers that her life with Bernard had plenty of corners that she never knew about. Harriet's no patsy, but she has a way of blundering into mishaps, including a memorable run-in with security ("Do I look like a terrorist to you? For heaven's sake, I'm Episcopalian!"). Evison allows his story to unfold at leisure, darting back and forth across the span of Harriet's life and sometimes telegraphing what lies ahead: writing of (and to) her at the age of 30, for instance, he says of one to-be-revealed matter, "it will be 48 years before you will confide the information to anyone." So Harriet, it seems, has secrets of her own. Evison writes humanely and with good humor of his characters, who, like the rest of us, muddle through, too often without giving ourselves much of a break. A lovely, forgiving character study that's a pleasure to read. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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November 4, 1936 (HARRIET AT ZERO) Here you come, Harriet Nathan, tiny face pinched, eyes squinting fiercely against the glare of surgical lamps, at a newly renovated Swedish hospital high on Seattle's First Hill. It's an unseasonably chilly Wednesday in autumn, and the papers are calling for snow. Roosevelt by a landslide! they proclaim. Workers grumbling in Flint, Michigan! In Spain, a civil war rages. Meanwhile, out in the corridor, your father paces the floor, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. Clutching an unlit Cuban cigar, he checks his wristwatch. He's got a three-o'clock downtown. By the end of the week, Harriet, you'll leave the hospital wrapped in a goose-down swaddler knit by your ailing grandmother. Your father will miss his three-o'clock today. But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. They don't call it labor for nothing. Let's not forget the grit and determination of your mother. All that panting and pushing, all that clenching and straining, eyes bulging, forehead slick with sweat. Let's take a moment to appreciate the fact that she won't begrudge you any of it, though you'll always be your father's girl. Here you come, better late than never: a face presentation. Not the boy your father so desperately wanted, but here you come, anyway, all six pounds three ounces of you. Button nose, conical head, good color. A swirl of dark hair atop your little crown. And a healthy pair of lungs, too. Listen to you wail as the doctor slaps your fanny: your cries phlegmy and protracted. Hear them? These are virtually the last sounds you will utter until well after your second birthday. Yes, Harriet, you were an exceptionally quiet child. Too quiet. Exhibit A: December 31, 1936. For the rest of their lives, your parents will regale you, and anyone who will listen, with a rollicking story about a certain New Year's Eve party on the north end. The story involves a bassinet into which your father, in a moment of stoned clarity and admirable foresight, fastened you by your ankles and armpits for safety, using his own necktie and a leather belt from the host's closet. The party is a triumph, as the story goes, with Bacchus leading the charge. The music is brassy, the walls are thrumming. So frenzied the celebration, in fact, that amid their merrymaking, revelers fail to notice the upended bassinet in the corner. That is, until whiz kid Charlie Fitzsimmons, the firm's youngest partner, lipstick on his collar, ladies' underpants adorning the crown of his head, nearly trips on you on his way back from the punch bowl. It will not be the last time Charlie Fitzsimmons takes notice of you. "Would you look at that glass of milk?" he shouts. For an instant, the party is struck dumb as everyone turns their attention to the corner. Look at Harriman Nathan's girl! "She'll make a hell of a judge," observes Charlie. And of course, hilarity ensues. The story never fails, and you're the punch line, Harriet. There you are, for God only knows how long, upside down, your poker face turning from red to blue to purple, your little gray eyes gazing impassively at the world, as your parents ring in a prosperous 1937. You never made a peep. This is your life, Harriet. The beginning, anyway. August 11, 2015 (HARRIET AT SEVENTY-EIGHT) Harriet finds Father Mullinix in his stuffy office behind the chapel, his reading glasses roosting halfway down the bridge of his nose, his laptop propped open in front of him. He's on his feet before she can cross the threshold. "Harriet, you're shivering. Sit." He lowers her into a straight-backed chair. "My goodness, you're sopping wet." "He's here, Father," she says. "I found his slippers this morning next to mine in the breakfast nook." Father Mullinix smiles patiently, setting his big hands on the desktop. "We've talked about this several times recently, Harriet. There's but one ghost in the Bible, and we both know who that is." "But last week, the WD-40. And now this." Drawing a weary breath, Father Mullinix holds it in. "You don't understand," says Harriet. "The WD-40, that was him, telling me to quiet those hinges on the dishwasher. He hated the squeaking." Slowly, Father Mullinix releases his breath. Clasping his hands together on the desktop, he proceeds expertly in a measured tone. "Perhaps it is possible he's trying to speak to you through God," he concedes. "But certainly I wouldn't take the WD-40 as a sign. Perhaps you left it there on the chair, a lapse in memory. It happens to me daily. Yesterday I found these very glasses in the pantry. We're all so busy in these times, so preoccupied. And you of all people, Harriet, you are so diligent in all things, particularly for someone of your . . . experience." "But I know I didn't leave it there. And the slippers." "Well, I'm sure there's an explanation." "I saw him Father, I felt him. Last night, we were at the Continental Buffet. He was eating corned beef." "Ah, I see. You've had another dream." "I wasn't dreaming. He was an actual presence." Father Mullinix smiles sadly, but Harriet can tell his patience is wearing thin. For months, she's been eating up his time, unloading her grief on him, bludgeoning him with the details of her dream life and, most recently, trying in vain to convince him that Bernard still lingered somehow in the earthly realm. Perhaps she was mistaken in confiding in him this time, though he'd never failed her in the past. "Do you think I'm, oh, Father . . . you don't think I'm . . . ?" "I think, perhaps, you could use some rest, Harriet." "But Father, I assure you I'm--" "Please, let me drive you home, Harriet." September 9, 1957 (HARRIET AT TWENTY) Look at you, Harriet, a grown woman! No longer a glass of milk but a tall drink of water. Okay, not so tall. Maybe a little on the squat side, maybe a little pudgy, to hear your mother tell it. But your hygiene is fastidious, your bouffant is formidable. And you're still quiet, which makes you popular among lawyers and men alike. But you've no time for men. You're a professional. Marriage is one negotiation that can wait. First, your own apartment. An automobile. A promotion. The sky is the limit! Here you are, at Fourth and Union, top floor, just three months removed from your associate's degree. And not your father's firm, either. Sure, you had a push, a few advantages in life, but you got here on your own. No, you'll never be a lawyer, but a crack legal assistant is not out of the question. You love your job. Okay, maybe love is a bit strong. But prepping documents, writing summaries, filing motions, all of it agrees with you. Look at you, downtown girl: chic but pragmatic. Shopping at Frederick & Nelson! Lunching at the Continental Buffet! Let's be honest, though. Let's talk about the problem that has no name. All these months later, they're still slapping your fanny around the office. Your salary doesn't stretch that far. The work is exhausting. As both a woman and an assistant, you're expected to work harder. And for what? A string of pearls? A sleek automobile? A slap on the can from a junior partner? It will be six more years before Friedan exposes the "feminine mystique," twelve more before Yoko Ono proclaims woman as "the nigger of the world." But by God, Harriet Nathan, you're determined to buck your disadvantages. Okay, maybe determined is a bit strong; how about resigned to them? The least you can do is achieve independence. Tackle adulthood on your own terms. Put that associate's degree to some purpose. Make a name for yourself, Harriet Nathan. The truth you're not telling anyone, especially not your father, is that amid the administrative whirlwind of the office, the hustle and bustle of downtown, the ceaseless tedium of legal research, you yearn for something less exhausting: for stability, predictability, and yes, a Christmas hearth festooned with stockings. You yearn, too, Harriet, for a man. C'mon, admit it. So, what is it about this new young building superintendent that catches your attention in the hallway upon your return from lunch, as he explains to your boss, in layman's terms even you can understand, the difference between AC and DC? Surely, it's not his stature. He's two inches shorter than you. And it turns out, he's not all that young, at thirty-three. There is, however, a squareness to his shoulders, a symmetry to his face, a quiet confidence in his bearing. Not just the firm, but the whole building--all that concrete and steel, all that electricity, all that plumbing--is reliant upon his capability. You're not alone. The whole office is impressed by his confidence, charmed by his forthrightness. Even the partners, those pompous autocrats, bulging at the waist, those experts who defer to no one, treat this man as an equal. But here's the thing: tending an elevator, a fan, a heating duct, in his neatly creased work trousers, penlight clutched between his teeth, as he reaches for his tool belt, exposing the gray Semper Fi tattoo on his inside wrist, he strikes you as more than their equal. Harriet Nathan, meet Bernard Chance, your valentine for 1957. Excerpted from This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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