In the saddest scene of “Our Short History,” a dying woman completely loses it when her 6-year-old son tells her that if he wakes up hungry in the middle of the night, his father’s wife will cook him something to eat. “She will never be your mother,“ Karen yells, and then over and over, her yelling turning into screaming: “She is NOT YOUR MOTHER. SHE IS NOT YOUR MOTHER. SHE IS NOT YOUR MOTHER).” She wonders if she would have assaulted him had her sister, Allie, not intervened.
Jake and Allie are horrified, and so are readers, who, by the time that scene takes place in Lauren Grodstein’s emotion-fraught new novel, are already feeling rattled by explicit descriptions of ovarian cancer. Karen’s desperate fears about her son’s future are making her say and do terrible things.
Most of us need not dig deep into our memories to recall a friend or loved one who died young from cancer. Our recollections evoke even more sorrow if the victim left behind small children. It’s why “Our Short History” provokes so much emotion. And Grodstein’s storytelling skills make Karen seem so real.
The novel takes the form of a memoir that Karen, a New York political consultant, is writing in the hope that Jake will remain connected to her. But Jake has another connection in mind. He wants to meet his father, who doesn’t even know Jake exists. Karen can’t think of a worse idea. When Dave walked out years earlier, he assumed she would have an abortion. Is Dave to blame for not knowing that he has a son? Is Karen?
When she tells Dave about Jake, he weeps with joy. The instant connection is a shock to Karen but probably no one else. Father and son look alike, geek out on Legos and, of course, want to see each other again. But their mutual devotion is killing Karen as much as the cancer. She has already planned the trajectory of Jake’s life after she dies, and there’s no room for Dave.
Grodstein’s descriptions of Karen’s treatment are textbook accurate and riveting. She captures the chilling reality of ovarian cancer. Survivors whom Karen knows “had escaped the relatively toothless ones, thyroid, early stage colon or breast. A handful of basal cells. Nobody with ovarian; almost nobody escaped that.” She knows she’s dying but wants to be the exception: “If someone got to be a miracle, why couldn’t it be me?” she wonders. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this. I don’t know why I have to try to sneak in the years that should be rightfully mine.”
Like “A Friend of the Family” and “The Explanation for Everything,” two earlier Grodstein novels, “Our Short History” honors the power of family ties. The ending may be predictable, but it carries an important lesson about letting go. In Karen’s case, it’s not so much accepting that she’ll die, leaving Jake behind, it’s the more subtle realization that she has a mother’s duty to help “the people you love most in the world leave you.”
‘Our Short History’
Author: Lauren Grodstein
Info: Algonquin, 342 pages