Author: Delia Ephron
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Pages: 304
Siracusa, Syracuse in Italian, is about the momentous, life-
and marriage-threatening events that take place in the lives of two couples, Lizzie
and Michael Shapner, and Finn and Taylor Dolan, while they are on a holiday
there. The Dolans are accompanied by their 10-year-old daughter Snow.
From the beginning, Taylor believes that the trip is a
conspiracy between Lizzie and Finn to be together. She also believes that
travel changes one’s perspective. In this novel, we see how it changes
relationships and marriages.
It soon becomes clear that Michael is drifting apart from
Lizzie, though it was Lizzie who once had an affair with Finn, long before
either of them got married. Michael has an affair with Kathy, a waitress at a
restaurant he and Lizzie often frequent. He does not have the guts to take a
decision and end the ambivalence in this mind. Instead he hopes that Lizzie
will tumble into bed with Finn, giving him the excuse he needs to walk out of
the marriage.
Meanwhile, Michael cultivates a patronizing friendship with
Snow, as a means of showing Finn up. Finn has never been allowed into the
closeness of Taylor and her daughter. None of the adults, other than Taylor,
think much of Snow other than thinking of her as a child, and even Taylor sees
her as dependent, incapable of making her own decisions, needing to be watched
over all the time.
But Snow is not a child. And she’s watching the ways of the
adults and learning. When Michael makes Snow feel important, she comes into her
own, asserting herself like never before.
Siracusa, a town on the coast of Sicily, is where everything unravels. Kath shows up, throwing
Michael’s life off-kilter, insisting that he break up with Lizzie, getting him
to buy her a ring worth 35000 euros. Michael can’t bring himself to break up in
a foreign land, but he does cavort around with Kath, while Lizzie, blissfully
unaware, is out sightseeing. Only Finn, having seen Michael with Kath, realizes
what is going on.
And then Kath turns into a nightmare, going rogue. She
stalks him, having used his flyer miles to get air tickets and his credit card
details to get a room in the same hotel. Michael decides to get rid of Kath,
but not lose Lizzie.
The story is told to us through the first person points of
view of Lizzie, Taylor, Michael and Finn. Each chapter has a different PoV. The
narration starts a few weeks before the vacation, and then continues through
each day of the holiday in the two cities, ending with what happened months
later after they all return home to Portland, a kind of epilogue in four
voices. The multiple viewpoints make it hard for us to be sympathetic to any
one character, and enforce neutrality upon us.
The trip is crucial. It is when they are thrown together in
such proximity that the characters behave as they do. The women have absolutely
nothing in common with each other, nor do the men.
With no clear plot, it is the characterizations that draw
the story forward. Subtly, we see how men and women differ in the ways in which
they lie and conceal important facts and circumstances in their lives. We see
the tangled webs they weave in their attempts to deceive one another.
Each character believes the best of themselves and good or
ill of others, depending upon the state of their affections. The characters all
have their games plotted out against their partners. Michael considers himself
unfaithful on the two occasions when he has sex with his wife.
Most of the characters make good observations about the
others. Taylor says of Finn: Finn takes a backseat to his own life. Perhaps
it is true when they say that marriage makes philosophers of us.
Finn describes Taylor as a lot of sharp angles, like Edward
Scissorhands, a vulnerable type who might slice you up.
Taylor is a mother who is devoted to her child. She says, “I’m
very accommodating, although I’m not sure anyone realizes it. Because of her
love for her child, I began by liking Taylor the most. Later, my sympathies
shifted to Lizzie.
The best description about Taylor comes from what her mother
once said of her: You are a long trail through the woods…and in the woods
people prefer a shortcut.
I enjoyed Lizzie’s descriptions of the thing that writers do, taking a friend, swallowing him (or her) whole, and turning him into a
character to suit their own fictional purposes.
Throughout the novel, Michael turns his life into fiction, living
his life like research, using it to write the life of his lead character,
Julien, who is also having a romp outside marriage.
April, Taylor’s friend, makes observations in absentia that
Taylor brings to us, about how women who aren’t mothers are emotionally stunted
but more importantly about how mothers feel guilty about everything even when it’s
not their fault. Now, don’t I know that?
Strangely, Taylor says her best friend is Rachel, but it is
April she keeps quoting.
The writing is interesting, clever, the quick turns of
phrases amusing and thought provoking. Telling you truths about how marriages
can get, once the euphoria fizzles out.
And by the way, I thought the cover with its broken glass, was nice. A tad overdone and simplistic maybe.
(I read an ARC from First To Read.)
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