~ Clock Dance, by Anne Tyler ~
This novel follows a charming chronology: we meet our protagonist, Willa Drake, in 1967, at 11 years of age, where her mum has just had a quarrel with her dad and left the house — again — and she is making do with her little sister, Elaine, and her dad, for a couple of days and then her mum returns.
Fast forward 10 years, to 1977, Willa is now in college, 21 years old and dating Derek McIntyre, a 23 year old, who wants to marry her at once, even though she has not finished her studies. In this section, Willa takes Derek home to meet her parents and sister. (The encounter is wonderfully written – little actually happens, but Tyler’s deft handling of motivations, histories, and tensions within the family speaks volumes beneath the seemingly civil surface exchanges.)
Next section, 20 years further, 1997, Willa is 41, and Derek is in a car accident. Her two sons are just finishing school, her mum is dead.
Then 2017, Willa is remarried to Peter, who is 11 years older than the 61 year old Willa. She is not close to either of her sons, Sean or Ian, nor to her sister, Elaine. Her father is dead. For all that she is such a kind, accommodating, obliging person, Willa surprisingly struggles to retain close relationships. She is universally liked, trusted, respected, even looked up to; she is fastidious, reliable, tactful, ladylike, dignified, classy, self-possessed. But apparently not very talented at intimacy.
Out of the blue, Willa receives a phonecall – from the neighbour of her eldest’s son’s ex-girlfriend (Denise), who says Denise’ daughter (not Willa’s grandchild) needs looking after because Denise has been accidentally shot and is in hospital. The point of this is the tortuous tenuousness of the call of duty on Willa. But Willa responds. She is happy to, recognising it has been so long since she was needed. Peter comes with her, but he does not enjoy the place, the people, nor Willa’s dedication to them, and he leaves as soon as he can. Willa though, elects to stay on, helping Denise when she comes out of hospital, grandmothering Cheryl, walking Airplane, the dog, getting to know the neighbours. Her sons continue to show little interest in her or in communicating and keeping in touch with her. Peter carps at her continuing to stay away, but lives his own life quite well.
At first, it is easy to sympathise with Willa. She bends over backwards to accommodate others, it would seem, especially the menfolk of her family, without getting much in return. But Tyler’s exchanges and silences are wonderfully revealing of how things are uneasy beneath the smooth surface. For instance, Willa makes up her mind to return to Arizona quite suddenly, and leaves a message for her husband telling him she will arrive the next day, and giving him the option of picking her up. Peter’s return message is ungracious:
“Willa” he said, “It’s Peter.” He spoke so sharply that she had to move the phone an inch or two farther away. “Tomorrow I’m tied up. I do have a life, after all, whether or not you’re aware of it. So you know what, Willa? You’ll just have to find your own way home. Bye.”
p287
Willa calls back to leave a message.
“Hi, honey,” she said, “It’s me. I’m sorry I didn’t think to ask if you’d be busy. I’ll just grab myself a taxi, no trouble at all, and see you at the house later. Love you!”
p288
Is this passive aggressive behaviour? Is it deceitful, given that Willa keeps projecting a falsely sunny demeanor to her husband, rather than sharing her real feelings and thoughts? Or is Willa just so habituated to keeping the peace and playing nice that she is incapable of responding with a display of anything except the bright and positive? Whichever it is, Tyler does a great job at creating these scenes and moments, filling them with tension, and setting up narratives which are all about showing and not telling.
The novel moves by leaps and bounds, giving the reader beautiful little slivers of Willa’s life. But like Willa herself, the novel also conceals much about Willa’s life. Glimpses and slivers are all the reader gets, from which to infer a lifetime of upsets, slights, hurts, disappointments, suppressed anger and vexation. Tyler is a master of her craft, she manages to hint and imply and give the reader a sense of almost foreboding, detailing the emotional nuances which so often escape people in the mundanity of everyday life, and which can cause key life events to teeter in one direction or another.
In all, a read which is well paced, surprisingly light, but profound nevertheless. Deeply satisfying. It can only be hoped that Tyler’s eagerly awaiting next novel is as excellent as this one!
Clock Dance, by Anne Tyler. Knopf, 2018
Lisa, did you figure out why the novel is called Clock Dance? I may have missed something there.
Also, the one section I never quite got was the incident with the gun on the plane. It didn’t quite seem to fit in with anything else, or make sense to either Willa or anyone to whom she told the story. Was that a metaphor or something?
Hey Susan, yes, there was somewhere – obscurely small – in the novel where clock dance is mentioned. It was something to do with how she perceived time passing. I remember thinking as I read that tiny buried nugget of explanation, that this is not a very good reason to give the book that as a title, just the same! Nevertheless, I quite like the phrase clock dance, even if it doesn’t apply particularly well or obviously to this novel!
The gun in the plane is a key incident, and it came up several more times – I think the key point was that her first husband – then boyfriend/fiancee – didn’t take her seriously. He couldn’t emphathise with what she found so scary. He was dismissive of her concerns. Then when she took him home and told the story, the fact her family didn’t seem to support her concerns either, seemed to make Willa determined further to marry him. That episode of bringing the boyfriend home was one of the best handled and written, i thought. It balanced so well the tensions, potentials, possibilities, childhood buried resentments, reverting to childishness when we go back to old home spaces, stubbornness, etc etc, so much as at play under the decorous surface.
When she married again, Peter, I think her 2nd and much older husband was, i think she told that gun story again, no? And I think again it didn’t receive the kind of attention and automatic horror it ought to have invoked in people who trusted her judgement. That story kept showing – to me, anyway! – that when sometime of real note and significance happens to Willa, the people closest to her seem to take no notice, glide right past the ‘incident’, no one seems to identify with her, understand her, see it from her POV. It made me realise why she feels so very lonely always.
Ah, I see what you mean. To me, though, it was never entirely clear if indeed the incident had happened as she thought, if the guy really had a gun, or if he was pulling her leg. It was so bizarre and unlikely.
I did like the scene where she brought the boyfriend home.