Cathleen Schine, _They May Not Mean To, But They Do_

THIS IS THE first of Schine's novels I've read, which is to say I have not read the one modeled on Sense and Sensibility, but I can tell from this one that Schine would be the right person to attempt such a thing.

Her characters, like Austen's, have been well brought up and tend to have good intentions, but have their blind spots, their flashes of selfishness, their capacities for fooling themselves. And, like Austen's, they have the capability, sometimes, to see through themselves and make a necessary course correction. (Is this the main difference, it occurs to me, between Austen and another great English writer of satirical fiction, Wyndham Lewis?)

They May Not Mean To, But They Do takes its title from the line that follows the unforgettable first line of Philip Larkin's poem "This Be the Verse." At the center of the novel is the topic of aging parents. The minds and bodies of Joy and Aaron Bergman of New York City have begun to slip, and their offspring Daniel (also of New York City, eco activist, married, two daughters) and Molly (now of California, divorced, one son, re-married to a same-sex partner) have to figure some things out. Unhappily, their parents' circumstances are changing so alarmingly that things have to be figured out anew every few months, or weeks, or days.

The brilliant thing about the book, though, is not just its portrait of how Molly and Daniel respond to this familiar problem--which, I can attest, having recently dealt with a lot of what they deal with, is a lifelike portrait indeed--but the choreography with which the novel's narration dances from one character's point of view to another's. We get the points of view of Molly and Daniel, of course, but also those of the parents, and those of the grandchildren, and those of the daughters-in-law. It's not a long book--a bit under 300 pages--but it affords a panorama, and Schine is as persuasive rendering the sensibility of a girl preparing for her bat mitzvah as she is that of a woman who can't remember what she came to the kitchen for.

A lot of the book is sad, and I mean sad, heart-breaking sad, as things fall apart. As you might guess, some of the characters die. But somehow Schine conjured up an utterly credible relatively-upbeat ending. Quite the magician.