Suddenly and Inexplicably
LEMMONS, PHILIP
Suddenly and Inexplicably The Doctor's Wife By Brian Moore Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 277 pp. $8.95. Reviewed by Philip Lemmons A novel whose premise is a passive heroine buffeted by circumstance...
...Reviewed by Philip Lemmons A novel whose premise is a passive heroine buffeted by circumstance must be careful: Too much inactivity may prove boring...
...in French literature) suffers in the bonds of marriage to a man who enjoys sports and television and disdains books and travel...
...A supposedly intelligent Sheila (we know she is intelligent because Moore assures us she holds an M.A...
...she tells Kevin of her affair after he has already discovered it, and soon after telling him, makes love to Tom "like a victim on a block...
...Unexpectedly, one of Moore's contrivances (otherwise known as the hand of Fate) strikes Ivo in the back...
...The injury is so serious that a new character must be introduced to report it: Ivo's attractive American buddy, Tom...
...He is also sexually dexterous and smart—though Moore, apparently worried that the reader may find Tom's intelligence as well-hidden as Sheila's, has thoughtfully arranged for Peg to cite the encomiums of one of Tom's professors at Trinity College...
...No sooner does she see him toss his long dark hair than "at once she [is] back in Paris in her student days, as though none of the intervening years had happened, those years of cooking meals, and buying Danny's school clothes, being nice to Kevin's mother, and having other doctors and their wives in for dinner parties, all that laundry list of events that had been her life since she married Kevin...
...The single difference now, after 277 pages, is that she has no one to say it to...
...On the last page, we see poor Sheila sitting alone on a park bench...
...The manipulations necessary to let us see Sheila from so many angles would be nothing more than a minor annoyance if any of these people offered insights into the workings of her mind...
...Redden in Belfast, providing the lovers with a few days to themselves in Villefranche...
...Her former life, her marriage, all that had gone before, now seemed to be her sin...
...that leaves shortly after Tom's charter...
...At least in this instance no one can accuse him of contrivance...
...Redden in Villefranche for a second honeymoon, Sheila visits her old friend Peg...
...Not content with throwing Tom in Sheila's path, Fate detains Dr...
...Tom suddenly and inexplicablyhas lifted the weight of Sheila's dreary, mundane past...
...It was as though wrong were right...
...And inexplicably...
...Her small income allows Fate to take a breather before hurrying on the scene with a modest legacy...
...Since the beginning she has had nothing to say...
...Her solitude enables her to devote 40 hours a week to a single ironic chore: washing clothes in a laundry...
...Thus in The Doctor's Wife Brian Moore often ventures into the consciousness of his main character, Sheila Redden, the 37-year-old unhappy spouse of a boorish Belfast physician...
...While in Paris waiting to join the uncultured Dr...
...These few days with Tom were her state of grace...
...Sheila books a flight to the U.S...
...The fear (or desire...
...After returning to Paris Tom urges Sheila to get a visa and fly with him to the U.S...
...Though Sheila resists the idea for awhile, she eventually agrees...
...Peg has a new lover, Ivo, whom she wants to show to solid, faithful Sheila...
...But she takes no part in planning their future, just as her passiveness prevents her from planning anything in her life: She married Kevin only to get away from home...
...Before the scheduled departure, however, "Suddenly, inexplicably, she felt herself tumble from the mental tightrope on which she had balanced for the past two weeks...
...She therefore stops communicating to her husband, Tom and everyone else she knows, and settles down in London...
...The novel offers several perspectives on this pathetic woman: her husband's, her son's, her brother's, her friend's, a Paris priest's, and even two English tourists' on the prowl for celebrities in Villefranche...
...All she wants is to be forgotten, like the man who goes to the corner drugstore to get a pack of cigarettes and is never heard from again...
...Since she will apparently be the subservient partner in any relationship, her one chance for freedom is to lead a solitary life...
...Unfortunately, what emerges is one woman's very dull mind, leaving Moore, already hampered by Sheila's inertia, to contrive potentially interesting situations to keep the reader's attention...
...Quite commendably, I thought, Moore mentioned the legacy earlier on...
...Clearly Tom, without even trying, would dominate her as thoroughly as Kevin had, a 'fact she realizes when she reflects/that her lover plans their future after sex because "sex seems to give him authority...
...One line of defense for an author is to produce a gripping psychological analysis, to focus inward...
...But much to everyone's dismay, she goes on fretting for about 60 pages, until she undergoes a nifty transvaluation of values...
...Sheila watches Tom's plane take off, then fails to board her own...
...Aside from serving as the romantic lead, Tom's function can be explained ethologically: His stimulus releases Sheila from her premarital behavior pattern...
...sometimes flits through Sheila's mind that a terrorist's bomb may relieve her of the need to fret about deserting her son and husband...
...She reciprocates of course, but not merely because Tom is tall, youthful and good-looking...
...Despite an 11-year age difference, Tom suddenly and inexplicably falls in love with Sheila...
Vol. 60 • February 1977 • No. 4
