“The caustic fact of the afternoon, the felt fact, was the sun…“
This is how Newfangled: A Novel by Debra Monroe (Simon & Schuster, $22 hard) begins, at the edge of Maidie Bonasso’s front yard, where she’s taking a lunch break from her job as curator of Tucson’s Museum of Domestic History and Home Economy (where she does things like catalogue old vases and brooms and butter paddles). The dry Arizona sun becomes one of the novel’s tropes, but its presence isn’t as noteworthy as the bond Monroe develops between reader and narrator, as if the narrator were speaking directly to the reader. It’s uncanny, because Monroe judiciously avoids introducing herself into the narrative like John Fowles does in The French Lieutenant’s Woman in that cloying modernist tradition of authorial intrusion. This narrator is an even-handed revealer of Maidie’s secrets; the secrets and details about Maidie’s past are not so much flashback as recalled, so that it’s readily apparent how Maidie’s past is a tie to her present. Maidie’s current secrets, her thoughts about those around her, are most effectively revealed in Newfangled‘s crackling, comedic dialogue, like this exchange about one of Maidie’s blind dates:
“It’s not that I’m prejudiced against vegetarians,” Maidie explained, in case a vegetarian was present. “It’s just that he seemed…”
“Like a pure type,” Clima said.
“Exactly.”
Newfangled follows Maidie (who is highly intelligent but not an intellectual – an important distinction in this novel) through two divorces, more than two relocations, and scads of emotionally uprooted friendships and loves. But these displacements are past events, and Newfangled teeters perilously close to overwhelming the reader with Maidie’s past, when what really shines is the representation of her life in Tucson. That’s a minor gripe, however, for a novel making the point that one’s past – and the ill-informed decision to flee it – are powerful influences upon one’s present. –Claiborne Smith
This article appears in April 17 • 1998 and April 17 • 1998 (Cover).