A Domestic Bubble

Here’s my hypothesis: ‘normal’ life right now is so stressful, traumatic and chaotic that authors are tilting towards gentler plots that avoid dealing with current events. There was Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake: a sweetly written story with no narrative tension at all. Now there is Anna Quindlen’s More than Enough.

Quindlen’s characters exist in the wealthy section of New York. Most of them have second homes in wealthy Long Island, or wealthy Connecticut suburbs. The poorest character is the protagonist, Polly, whose parents are a very accomplished judge and a solidly reliable father who provided for the family. Polly is a high school English teacher in a fancy private school, and her husband Mark is a large-animal vet at the Bronx Zoo, so they have less money than their friends, but as the title of the book indicates, they all have ‘more than enough’.

It’s more than just the wealth of the characters that makes this book seem unreal, though. The novel appears to be set in current times, but the characters have no political, legal, or social concerns. A huge storm affects them, but there is no mention of climate change. No one is concerned about the rising costs of rent or utilities in New York City. None of them have children in the 25-35 age group who can’t find jobs or are struggling with health insurance.

In Tom Lake, Ann Patchett provided a bubble by setting the novel during the pandemic, so that it became natural for the lovely happy family to live on a gorgeous and isolated farm. In this novel, however, it seems extremely odd for these characters to be so isolated from reality.

A small collection of problems afflict the characters, of course, otherwise there would be no novel. Polly’s three best friends include Sarah, who has cancer; Jamie, who can be bitingly sarcastic, and Helen, who has no distinct personality. Polly has a distant and contentious relationship with her mother. Polly wants to have a child, but this is her second marriage and she is over 40, so is going through the painful process of IVF. Polly’s father has Alzheimer’s.

These are problems indeed, but many of them are ameliorated by the cushion of money. Sarah, with cancer, has a fulltime housekeeper who looks after her devotedly, and an enormous suburban idyll where she can retreat for peace and privacy. Polly and her husband can afford the expensive IVF treatments, and she has a sympathetic boss. Polly’s family can afford to have her father stay in a very expensive assisted living place. One of Polly’s students suffers from depression, and is promptly sent off to another expensive rehab facility. Quindlen is ‘writing what she knows’, one assumes, but it makes the novel less relatable, and makes the characters less interesting to have their problems so easily dealt with.

Reproduction is at the center of the novel via two threads: Polly’s infertility and IVF, and the DNA test she takes which shows she has an unknown niece. But how? She says her father was unlikely to have had an affair, since he came home every evening and never travelled. Complications are introduced by the fact that the unknown niece, Talia, is half black. Over the course of the novel, the answer (likely guessed by the reader) emerges.

Every character is benevolent, and almost every relationship is supportive. Kindly older women abound: there is Polly’s wonderful mother-in-law who is calm, reassuring, able to handle hosts of grandchildren, and emotionally supportive. Then there is Barbara, the grandmother of Talia, who is the earth-mother type: runs an alpaca farm, grows herbs and is in touch with nature, who is also calm, reassuring, and emotionally supportive. Polly’s friend Sarah is older, calm, supportive etc. Polly’s husband Mark is calm, supportive etc.

Amidst all this kindness, Polly seems like the rough edge. She is relentlessly combative with her mother, and shows not an ounce of pride in her mother’s accomplishments. She is self-absorbed: when Sarah tells her about the cancer, Polly has no sympathy, but

“She should have told me. You should have told me.”

She is furious with her mother for putting their father in a nursing home, but obviously has no inclination to take over his care herself.

[Polly] “You could get a night-time person so the man can stay in his own home.

[Her mother] “Or he could come and live with you. Or you could move in and deal with him at night.”

[Polly] “In sickness and in health?”

[Her mother] “Oh please, the smugness is so unattractive.”

[Polly] “And you have work to do.”

[Her mother] “And so do you. But only mine is cause for rebuke, right?”

When Sarah is getting more frail, Polly says

“I need to be here when –“.

“I think maybe this is a time when all that matters is what she needs,” Lou said.

Everyone walks on eggshells around Polly and considers her feelings above all. Her book club never comment on why Polly is avoiding alcohol. Her sister-in-law is only too ready to push her own child into the background in case Polly gets upset by the presence of a baby .

“I can either let you hold him all the time,” my sister-in-law Emily said after David was born, “or I can arrange it so you hardly ever see him when you’re here. Whatever works with how you’re feeling at this stage of the game.”

And yet, despite her self-centeredness, Polly is beloved by (almost) all. Her newly-found niece Talia and her students all adore her. Her husband, his family, and her father and brother are devoted to her. Only her mother seems to evaluate her with some objectivity. Since the novel is told entirely from Polly’s point of view, the reader is implicitly expected to identify with her, but she is not an appealing or understandably flawed character.

The writing is quite pleasant, and Quindlen can still do the occasional amusing sidenote.

He has a resonant laugh, somewhere between alto and tenor. It’s a little studied, but still charming. I’ve been at parties where he did it around waiters, and he got lots of passed hors d’oeuvres afterward. And who knows what else.

I was not surprised when Polly’s two problems — a (highly relative) poverty and the inability to bear a child — were miraculously and conveniently resolved by the end of the book. Between the rather clichéd characters, the unrealistic bubble, and the unimaginative treatment of plot points like IVF and surprise results from DNA tests, this is not a book I’d recommend.

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