Thursday of the week is devoted to airing out religion and religions. The column’s title, “Thor’s Day,” comes from the etymology of the word Thursday, literally “Thor’s Day.”
That first discussion of my neighborhood’s book club, which I mentioned last week, wasn’t at all bad (see “Life as we live it”). Reading Elizabeth Strout’s excellent novel in short stories (Olive Kitteridge) led me to read her previous novel, Abide with Me. It’s another serious, adult story, this time focusing on the recently widowed minister of a small community and his relationship with his five-year-old daughter, his mother, and the members of his church’s congregation.
Strout’s portrait of the Reverend Tyler Caskey and of most of the novel’s other three or four dozen characters is sharp and amazingly nuanced, with virtually every character’s being shown from two or more angles: how they and others view them. These views are often in sharp conflict. The effect is particularly telling (and crucial to the plot) in the case of Tyler’s daughter Katherine, who really dislikes Mrs. Hatch, the woman who comes to clean and help out.
“[Katherine’s plight] was sad. Oh, absolutely. But the child exasperated people. She exasperated Connie Hatch, who couldn’t help but remember how the little girl used to call her “Hatchet Foghorn,” back when the little thing was still talking, prattling away to everyone, but especially to the resplendent, well-formed woman who had been her mother. A woman who had probably come up with the name Hatchet Foghorn herself, and it was foolish—Connie being so quiet. [p. 30, Large Type edition]
Tyler has no inkling. He likes Connie Hatch, sympathizes with her, even feels some sort of close connection with her. Besides, as a learnedly devout Christian (who can effortlessly pull from memory quotations from the Bible and the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Søren Kierkegaard, and—however dangerous in this small community—various Catholic saints), he overlooks all and is completely oblivious to how the woman might appear to his daughter, whom he trusts is doing fine and adjusting without problems to her mother’s death a year earlier.
Tyler is called to chat with one of Katherine’s teachers about the child’s not playing with the other children at school.
“Who gives Katherine her baths?” Mrs. Ingersoll said.
“What’s that?”
“Her baths,” the woman said. “Who is it that bathes Katherine?”
The minister’s eyebrows drew together. “The housekeeper, usually,” he said.
“Does she like her?” Mrs. Ingersoll pulled a tiny chain out from beneath the neckline of her red dress, running it back and forth with a finger.
He said, “Oh, well. With Katherine it’s sometimes hard to tell.”
“I meant, does the housekeeper like Katherine?”
He saw that the chain held a small silver cross. “Oh. Of course. Connie Hatch is a fine woman. Solid. Solid citizen.” [p. 37]
This same sort of 360° depiction of characters is abundantly evident in Olive Kitteridge, and I think I can safely say that it is a hallmark of the author. I can’t think of any other writer who handles this more deftly, or even tries to give such full portraits.
Tyler’s learned distraction is evident in his awkwardness in trying to counsel his parishioners, and it is clear from a discussion late in the book between Tyler and an old mentor from seminary, that “a dogmatic pastor is useless.” [p. 423]
[Doris Austin] sat down, and while he could have chosen to sit in the chair across from her, he sat instead behind his desk. She said, “I was hoping when I saw you in Hollywell to talk about what’s bothering me.”
“I’m sorry, Doris,” he said. “My mind was on a number of things.”
…
“I’m sad.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Doris.” After a moment he asked, “What is it that makes you sad—do you know?”
“Everything,” she answered.
“I see. Oh, boy,” said Tyler, tapping his fingers against his mouth. “I’m sorry.”
“In the whole world,” she added. And without any more warning than a slight reddening of her eyes, she began to weep.
He looked away. “Doris. You know…” He thought, Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. He could not think what to say….
“Charlie makes me sad,” Doris said.
“Yes, I see,” Tyler said. “Well.” This complicated things. Charlie Austin was head deacon of the church, a man reserved to the point of having, in Tyler’s eyes, bad manners; and Tyler, as much as he could, had left him alone.
“He’s irritated with me all the time.”
Tyler put his hands in his lap and held them tightly. “Doris,” he said, “marriages go through rough patches. Most of them do…You might want to read the autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux….”
“He hits me.”
…“Would Charlie agree to counseling?”
“Charlie would kill me if he knew I’d come in here.”
Tyler looked over at his sagging bookshelf, at the mess of papers on his desk, back at Doris…Tyler tapped his mouth with his fingers. He thought of Bonhoeffer writing that is was not love that sustained a marriage but the marriage that would sustain the love. Tyler wanted to mention this, but Doris’s weeping had become very noisy…[pp. 54-57]
At this point I began to think that Abide with Me might be building towards a devastating attack on religion (a fictional version of atheistic books like those of, say, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens). But the rest of this tight, well-motivated, beautifully written, unputdownable novel doesn't seem to bear that out. If the author is an atheist, she hasn't written her atheist novel yet—unless it was Olive Kitteridge, with whose vehemently atheistic title character Strout seems to me to sympathize more than with Tyler Caskey.
Tyler’s inability to preach to the packed crowd in the pivotal scene of the book’s final chapters provokes a wholly unexpected outpouring of sympathy from the people who had just been spreading a vicious rumor about him. Despite all the religious false-starts and distractions, a human connection has at last been made.
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