Susan (a shrink with a lot of time on her hands) says to Tom, "Will you stay in New York and tell me all you know?" and he does, for nearly 600 mostly-bloated pages of flashbacks depicting The Family Wingo of swampy Colleton County: a beautiful mother, a brutal shrimper father (the Great Santini alive and kicking), and Tom and Savannah's much-admired older brother, Luke. Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend-the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore.
When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. Ranjana, for instance, is “pleased to discover that you could feel a friendship’s construction if you took the time and care to notice it.” As their lives intermingle, they discover not just friendship, but the value of their own heightened sensitivity to the world.Ī funny, uplifting novel that delivers emotionally complex characters.Ī flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent.
Having felt the sting of being scrutinized or ignored because of their accented English, their skin color, or their sexual orientation, they have developed introspection into both an art form and a crutch, so that even simple human connection comes as a wonderful surprise. These are stories of people who have not had the luxury of living unexamined lives. Satyal imbues each of these characters (and a host of their friends, co-workers, and acquaintances) with psychological depth and does so, often, with cinematic vividness. Uniting the three is a keen desire to feel, and be recognized as, fully human-emotionally and sexually fulfilled, connected to their families and communities, and free of the grip of past traumas. Ranjana’s son Prashant, a Princeton freshman, harbors misgivings about his major and life trajectory. Ranjana, a 40-something aspiring writer, has suspicions about her husband’s fidelity, is disappointed by her friendships with other Indian women, and has doubts about her self-worth. Harit, an emotionally stunted middle-aged department store clerk, disguises himself in a sari to convince his nearly catatonic mother that her beloved daughter is still alive. Spanning a remarkable range of cultural milieus, Satyal’s second novel ( Blue Boy, 2009) tells the intersecting stories of three Indian immigrants living in a Cleveland suburb.
struggle to find self-acceptance and meaningful relationships.
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