Need to Know

Hooray.  I have just finished two excellent books.  Can I hope for this streak to continue?  Considering that I discovered both of them in that unreliable compendium of miserable current books, the Sunday New York Times book review section, this takes on an even more special aura ... pearls before swine.  Although I finished this one last, I will review it first.

After Visiting Friends is Michael Hainey's story about finding out under what circumstances his father died when he was six years old.  I don't really want to describe Hainey's father's death, the cover up or his family's omerta like repression of talking about it.  Nor do I want to focus on Hainey's dogged research as an expression of his inherited and ingrained reporting instincts.  I loved the book for his family.  

The best metaphor I can come up with for his mother is Lot's wife.  After her husband dies, she becomes as rigid, silent and steadfast as a pillar of salt, her only animation is to drive on the well being of her two young sons.  Growing up in the late 50s early 60s, she has the blessing of an extended family to help her cope.  Hainey's maternal grandmother and his uncle, also a newspaperman, anchor him, but anchor him next to a gaping emotional hole, the space where a boy's father should reign.

The sworn to secrecy "old boys club" of his dad's contemporary writers at the paper through up blocks and dead ends as he tries to find out any information.  From decades of his mother slicing the air with her hand as the penultimate gesture of "don't go there" Hainey's search/adventure becomes more classic, more daring.

After his mother, my next favorite character is the woman at the morgue, one of those true Christians who can read Hainey's anguish and fear and who prays with him to give him strength, courage and stamina.  Now I am sure many jaded cosmopolitan East Coast GQ readers will construe this as a literary device, especially attributing a deus ex machina like quality to her random call years latter with no new information but just the need to bring him to closure.  No, I know these people exist.  They are not preying on our weaknesses, they are praying for our peace.  Even lapsed faithfuls like me and Hainey are moved by their public displays of unselfish faith and trust in a guided purpose to our actions.

The counterpoint to Hainey's need to break through a code of silence is his parallel struggle of when and how much to tell his mother about what he finally discovers.  Are family secrets best kept in the closet?  Should adult children discuss a parent's infidelity with the other spouse?  Should Hainey remain as silent as his mother?

The book ends with him and his mom at the kitchen table after she has told him her own personal hidden secrets about his father.  There can be no further tarnishing, yet no further polishing of their reputations.  He is reconciled with her.  But who is he and what secrets has he still kept about himself from his readers?