To Rock Bottom and Back: Gabrielle Zevin’s “The Hole We’re In” Soars https://ift.tt/1Qz9OPG
In some ways, The New York Times-bestselling author Gabrielle Zevin’s new novel, The Hole We’re In, goes down easy. Maybe a little too easy. Zevin’s signature style flies readers through a journey of one relatable family’s life. But before you know what’s happening, the trip has turned into one steep slide of generational demise.
It’s the mid-80s, a time “when banks were loaning money to dogs and babies and the homeless and anyone who could make an X (or stamp a paw or drool a bit) on the dotted line,” and disillusioned Roger Pomeroy moves his family into a brick-red house in suburban Texas. Roger dreams of writing a book to elevate him to fame and fortune, but when his collaboration with PhD advisor Caroline leads to infidelity, his dream fades. On the home front, his wife George isn’t faring any better, trying to make ends meet. Only George knows how many financial secrets she’s keeping, and when the Pomeroys’ eldest daughter, Helen, demands a fancy wedding, George quietly opens credit card after credit card.
Things spiral when 16-year-old daughter Patsy, a firecracker blondie, is spotted kissing her boyfriend, and when Roger finds evidence of someone’s abortion, he wrongly assumes it to be hers. With his family presumably out of control, Roger recommits himself to god, breaks if off with Caroline, and banishes Patsy to the family’s hometown of Buckstop, Tennessee, a fictional one-stoplight town where only Patsy’s zealot grandmother will find her. In Buckstop, former cheerleader Patsy tells friends, “I fell from the top of this pyramid last year and everything since then’s felt sort of like a dream.”
Roger preaches his personal brand of Christianity — devout hypocrisy in action — despite being estranged from Patsy, who heads overseas for six years with the Reserves. When she comes home to Buckstop, scarred by her time in the Middle East and secretly pregnant, Patsy struggles to regain her footing. Things are rough, and Patsy thinks, “If hope is a thing with feathers…despair was a thing in armor.” And thanks to the guy she comes home to in Buckstop, there’s a huge hole in her backyard where a pool should’ve been – they’d just started digging and never finished.
The Pomeroys almost reunite happily, but in a brilliantly stand-out chapter, Helen’s daughter nearly dies in a fall from a tree. “Helen heard a thump. She thought the sound seemed too soft and too light to hold any consequence…A laundry bag flung from a window…Something minor. Something distant even. Something happening to the neighbors and not to her.” But as with all the family’s issues, just because something feels surreal doesn’t mean it isn’t actually happening.
Finally, at her father’s graveside, Patsy realizes how steep the climb to stability is. “You spend your whole life trying to get out of holes,” she muses. “The hole you’re born into…The hole you dig yourself…The hole your children are born into…How in the world do you ever get out?” It’s a question Zevin is comfortable leaving with her readers, refusing to offer a ladder for quick escape.
With precision-sharp insight, memorable scenes, and colorful family dynamics, Zevin lifts a familiar storyline of rocky family life from the trenches and gives it movement and purpose. Issues like casual racism, reproductive rights, and bodily autonomy nestle inside the larger picture of one family’s difficult experience of getting by and getting along, andZevin knows just when to zoom in and force a closer examination of what hurts most, calling out hypocrisy and secrecy in what should be the safe space of home. Bigotry, selfishness, and pride – these are the potholes which line the road of life for many families. As Caroline asks Roger before their affair begins, “How can you look at a hole?” It doesn’t matter, Zevin posits. “In theory, [it doesn’t matter] what hole you were in.” You just stay close to the people who matter and help each other climb out.
FICTION The Hole We’re In Gabrielle Zevin Grove Press Published August 15, 2023
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