Eleanor Rushing
Patty Friedmann
Counterpoint, 2000 (ISBN 1582430772 / 9781582430775)
Fiction, 288 pages
If you have reviewed this book, please leave the link in a comment or e-mail it to me at 3.rsblog AT gmail DOT com, and I’ll edit this review to include it!
First Sentence: I think it is impossible to change the world unless you are truly evil and so mad for control you never sleep.
How to explain an obsessive personality given to delusions of love? Look to childhood. Thirty-year-old Eleanor Rushing lost both parents in a plane crash when she was small, leaving her a poor little rich girl living in New Orleans with her grandfather and his housekeeper, Naomi, a warm, wisecracking black woman who has some of the best comeback lines in Friedman’s second novel. Eleanor now claims Naomi molested her. But what is the raving of an unbalanced mind, and what is real? Meanwhile, Maxim Walters, a married Methodist minister, becomes the unwitting object of Eleanor’s misdirected yearnings. When he travels to Nashville on business, Eleanor, who has staged an auto accident in front of his house to gain his attention, rises from her bed of pain to follow him, uninvited. She worms her way into dinner at his colleague’s home, just as, convinced of their mutual passion, she manages to show up wherever he is whenever she can. This tale of sad obsession seems fearfully true to life. Whitney Scott
Comments: Wikipedia’s entry defining the “unreliable narrator” states, in part (read the full entry here):
“…(A)n unreliable narrator…is a literary device in which the credibility of the narrator is seriously compromised. This unreliability can be due to psychological instability, a powerful bias, a lack of knowledge, or even a deliberate attempt to deceive the reader or audience. Unreliable narrators are usually first-person narrators, but third-person narrators can also be unreliable…(T)he story itself may have a frame in which the narrator appears as a character, with clues to his unreliability. A more common, and dramatic, use of the device delays the revelation until near the story’s end. This twist ending forces the reader to reconsider their point of view and experience of the story. In many cases the narrator’s unreliability is never fully revealed but only hinted at, leaving the reader to wonder how much the narrator should be trusted and how the story should be interpreted.”
Eleanor Rushing is a fine example of such a narrator – if “fine” is the right adjective to apply here. One really can’t call her a liar, because she certainly believes everything she’s telling you is utterly true, even if she’s the only one who remembers it that way. While it is fact that she was orphaned in a tragic accident at the age of ten and stopped speaking for the next four years, nearly everything else since is open to question.
This is an odd novel, and while it did pull me in and hold my interest, I’m not sure I can say I liked it. Eleanor is a fascinating, and frustrating, character. A brief word with a local minister at a City Council meeting has her convinced that he has immediately fallen in love with her, and she begins creating various situations to bring them together; the operative word to describe her activities is “stalking.” She won’t take “no” for an answer if it contradicts her view of things – although her view of things is usually, to put it charitably, quite delusional.
The story is set in New Orleans, and has a taste of that Southern-gothic flavor, mixing sad situations with elements of screwball comedy. Eccentric, unstable, wealthy belles are somewhat of a staple of the genre, and I think Eleanor fits into that niche. While there are clues throughout the book that things aren’t really the way Eleanor describes them, the truth is saved till nearly the end of the story – and while that truth may evoke some sympathy for Eleanor, I really didn’t find her a sympathetic character. She has no real self-knowledge, nor any desire to gain it, which is one of the reasons I found her frustrating; I like to see some growth in the protagonist, and Eleanor just doesn’t seem interested in that. Then again, you can’t help anyone who doesn’t want to be helped, let along those who can’t admit there’s a problem in the first place.
However, while Eleanor can be aggravating, she is compelling and rarely dull, and I suspect I won’t forget her quickly. Author Patty Friedmann picked up her story again last year in A Little Bit Ruined
Rating: 3.25/5
This sounds like something I would really like. Me with my thing for dark and damaged people. Eleanor sounds like a fascinating character, and I love the idea of an unreliable narrator. I have read a few books written in that style and they are rarely ever boring. Thanks for the great review!
Literary Feline – It definitely wasn’t boring. Let me know if you’d like my copy. I’d really love to know someone else’s opinion on it.
Maybe you should just start sending me all of your books after you read them. Only kidding, of course. 🙂
Literary Feline – I’ll take that as a yes – for this book, anyway. I really don’t think you want them all :-).
I still have your address from the last book I sent you, and I have to do some shipping tomorrow, so I’ll get it on the way to you soon.