Any Bitter Thing
By Monica Wood
Chronicle Books
$23.95 hard cover, 345 pages; ISBN 0-8118-4604-0 (2005).
This wonderful Maine writer – the author of Secret Language, My Only Story and a collection of short stories called Ernie’s Ark – has done it again. All her works are a study of character development. Any Bitter Thing is no exception.
Reading this book reminds me of Richard Russo, another Maine writer who has praised Wood’s previous work. The feeling that you’re in the hands of a master story teller showing you the lives of ordinary people in a small-town Maine inescapably brings the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Empire Falls to mind. However, this story isn’t about a decaying town, but rather a Catholic priest undergoing a crisis of commitment.
Thirty-year-old Lizzy Mitchell is having marriage problems and goes out for a walk to avoid talking with her husband. She is struck by a car and left in the middle of the road. A man – who Lizzy later calls the “Bad Samaritan” moves her to the side of the road and calls 911. Lizzy barely survives and is haunted by what she believes is a visit by her long-dead Uncle Mike. Slowly, Lizzy starts to recall pieces of her childhood.
Wood deftly goes back in time to show how Lizzy lost her parents in a plane crash, and from a very young age went to live with her uncle, Father Mike. Wood describes Lizzy’s nearly idyllic childhood growing up with her uncle. When she is nine, her world is shattered when Father Mike is falsely accused of abusing her and Lizzy is forced to live with other relatives. Things go from bad to worse when Lizzy is told that Father Mike has died from a weak heart. If so, did she really see him in the hospital or was she imagining it? If he’s alive, why hasn’t he contacted her in all these years?
The layered story, various points of view, gorgeous descriptions and moving characters make this novel one that you’ll not soon forget. Wood is also the author of two Writers Digest books: Description and The Pocket Muse. Her prose is moving and poignant.
When she first comes home from the hospital, Lizzy’s husband Drew is urging her inside their home.
“Let’s get you inside.”
“Wait.” I made a slow circuit along the porch, leaning intermittently on my cane, looking down at my dead garden.
“I meant to keep it up,” Drew said. He rattled the door-knob, trying to coax me inside.
“I’m not blaming you.”
“I know you’re not.”
“I’m just looking at everything,” I told him. “Looking at how everything changes.”
“Probation,” Drew said. “Spoiled little brat half kills a person and what does she get? Three months, suspended. We could sue her ass, Lizzy.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to be the type of person who sues.”
“I want somebody to suffer.”
What he meant was that he wanted somebody to suffer more than us. Instead of us.
This novel highlights an author in full command of her craft. It deserves to be a best seller.
