The Sorrows of an American

Now the ravens nest in the rotted roof of Chenoweth's old place
And no one's asking Cal about that scar upon his face
'Cause there's nothin' strange about an axe with bloodstains in the barn,
There's always some killin' you got to do around the farm
Murder in the red barn
Murder in the red barn
- Tom Waits

That song keeps playing in my head throughout The Sorrows Of An American - even though it's long unclear whether there's a murder in it at all. Apart from that one September, 2001 mass-murder that turns up as a (mostly, though not completely, unspoken) background for every mid-2000s New York novel, that is. There's a barn, though.

There's death, though. Three of them, to be precise... OK, a few more, but three that start the various plot lines of the story. Our narrator, Erik, has just buried his father (natural causes, old age). While he and his recently widowed (natural causes, cancer) sister clean out their father's papers, they find a note:

June 27, 1937

Dear Lars,
I know you will never ever say nothing about what happened. We swore it on the BIBLE. It can't matter now she's in heaven or to those here on earth. I believe in your promise.
Lisa.

So there's secrets too. Was his father involved in a murder? (Well, OK, as a WWII vet he'd have been involved in quite a few deaths, but those aren't murders, are they?) What are the things we don't tell anyone, and nobody wants to ask about, while we're alive (especially if we, like Erik's family, are of hard-working grimly quiet Scandinavian stock and there are Things We Don't Talk About), but which people think they need to know about us after we're gone?

Tied into this is the sister's dead husband, a famous writer (not entirely dissimilar to a certain black-wearing postmodern author close to Hustvedt) whose life and wife is now fair game for the journalists; the mysterious beautiful single mother who just rented the flat below Erik and may be stalked by her ex; and Erik's own issues - including potential violent tendencies - which he is all too aware of.

I remember reading Hustvedt's previous novel, What I Loved, and coming away from it raving that not only was Paul Auster not the greatest novelist in the US, he wasn't even the greatest novelist in his own flat. I rated it a very solid . A couple of years later I can't really remember what specifically about it made me say that, which may be more my fault than Hustvedt's. But much like What I Loved, The Sorrows is basically everything you'd expect of a good (post)modern New York novel; middle-class white people in a suitably upgraded Brooklyn neighbourhood with artists lurking around every corner, dealing with their internal and external problems against a backstory leading back to the Old Country (in this case only a couple of generations, as evidenced by the family members occasionally slipping in the odd Norwegian word) and tackling the Big Questions of life and death and love and sex along the way. Franzen, Foer, all that lot.

Which is bit unfair against The Sorrows (and against Franzen and Foer) as it's really a rather good novel; it's just not a very surprising one. Along the way Hustvedt deals subtly, if somewhat conveniently at times, with the way life messes us up (as a psychoanalyst, Erik keeps coming back to the word "trauma"), the way we try to know each other and ourselves, the way honesty may be the most deceptive thing of all; does knowing The Truth about someone actually tell you the truth of who they are?

I miss the patients. It's hard to describe, but when people are in desperate need, something falls away. The posing that's part of the ordinary world vanishes, that How-are-you?-I'm-fine falseness. The patients might be raving or mute or even violent, but there's an existential urgency to them that's invigorating.

But still, seeing someone sick gives you one picture of who that person is. The book's villain, or as close as it comes to having a villain, runs around with a camera capturing supposedly authentic pictures of people; pictures don't lie (or well, he knows Photoshop) but the shutter speed is only a fraction of a second, yet that one picture overrules all the other fractions of a second that makes up a life. For deeper understanding of others and ourselves, we have stories; the narrative that shows us progression, facets, development, even if each chapter in the story is not the complete truth.

Trauma isn't part of a story; it is outside story. It is what we refuse to make part of our story.

Stories like, I suppose, this one. The Sorrows Of An American is a fine piece of fiction and it's very hard to find fault with it - OK, maybe the ending leaves a bit to be desired. But Hustvedt manages to make what could have been a very depressing novel into something life-affirming and even bleakly funny, with well-done characters and an excellent ear for dialogue. If you have to make the comparison (which isn't as unfair as it may seem, as they really do have a lot in common) I suppose one could argue that she and her husband mirror each other; he starts with the ideas and builds his stories on them, she starts with the story and digs until she finds the ideas - and unlike Auster's latest novels, her characters and their stories feel more genuine and less like author avatars. She hides her work, and she hides it behind a simple but effective prose that, like a good Scandinavian American should, says things without necessarily spelling them out.

It's not essential, it won't save or change your life, and if your taste is anything like mine you've probably read similar stories before. But who says every new novel has to reinvent the genre? Stories need to be told in order to exist, and this one deserves to live.