Written by Marianne Mansfield
“Single Wife” by Nina Solomon
Algonquin Books, 2003. 336 pages.
The title is what drew me in as I browsed books in a second-hand store in a resort town. The cover blurb was intriguing. “Single Wife” by Nina Solomon is the story of a woman married for five years to a man who continues to disappear. Each incident lasts longer than the previous one and leaves the wife, Grace, with the burgeoning task of pretending that her dashing husband, Laz, is simply away on business.
Although “Single Wife” is Nina Solomon’s debut novel, it doesn’t fall into the trap of many first efforts. The dialogue is crisp, and the descriptions of modern life in New York City are captivating. Especially intriguing is how the characters inhabit a microcosm of a few blocks, tunneling in and out of old brownstones to avoid the elements of weather and, apparently, each other.
Solomon also does an above average job of showing the reader how Grace’s persona relies on Laz’s quixotic behavior for its definition. For the first third of the book, Grace thinks of herself solely as a function of how Laz has influenced and shaped her. It is only as Grace begins to lean into his disappearance that Grace starts to discover the person she was before she met and married Laz.
Solomon treats the reader to a delectable buffet of clues as to where Laz might be as well as what might have triggered his protracted disappearance this time. Is he nearby? Is he in a foreign country? Is he sending her secret messages that only she would understand?
While swimming in the riddle of Laz’s whereabouts, Grace struggles to keep up an elaborate charade with friends and family designed to lead them to believe that Laz is just in the next room, so to speak. As Grace is compelled to become more creative with her ruse, she if forced to confront aspects of her marriage which her husband’s former proximity has allowed (forced?) her to ignore.
As Grace stumbles over pieces of her past that she has both figuratively and literally stuffed away in boxes in her closet, she begins to ask the tough questions of herself that she once thought were answered by the existence of her nearly perfect marriage. Her growth in self-awareness is paced nicely within the unfolding of the plot.
“Single wife” is not a great novel, and it has some serious flaws.
When I was taking creative writing classes, we called it “literary throat-clearing.” Throat clearing is the tendency of authors, many of them new to the genre, to wander into and out of their plot points, often repeatedly. In “Single Wife,” there are multiple times when Grace encounters clues that are designed to lead the reader to believe that they have been left by Laz. Unfortunately, there are too many of them, and Solomon seems to insert them when she senses her plot beginning to drag. It is as though Solomon is putting familiar words on a page until her next genuine plot line springs into her head.
There is also an overuse of a few characters, notably Laz’s son, an obscure man who appears to be a private investigator, and Grace’s best friend, Kane. These characters appear and depart abruptly in the story once they’ve delivered their respective pieces of the puzzle, entitled “Where is Laz?”
So, as a novel, this one isn’t great, but it isn’t awful. For a summer read, it was fun.
Now, if it were up to me, I’d like to see Solomon take this work and re-imagine it as a short story. Take out some of the throat clearing. Make the entry and exit of the supporting characters understandable and crisp, and propel Grace down a more direct path of self-actualization.
And what about the ending, you might ask? I absolutely cannot say much about it without giving it away. It disappointed me some, but I will confess that I didn’t actually see it coming.
Nina Solomon has just come out with another novel, “The Love Book,” which revolves around four unlikely friends who first meet during a disastrous Flaubert-themed bike trip in France. She is also working on a short story cycle.
While I might forego “The Love Book,” I’m going to be on the lookout for the short stories. I think that genre might be the author’s forte.
