Stark look at intolerance
By Jean Thompson |
January 13, 2012, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
EILEEN Pollack's new novel, "Breaking and Entering," takes place in rural Michigan in 1995 - the epicenter and high point of the militia movement, before increased scrutiny and revulsion at the Oklahoma City bombing put some militia groups out of business and sent others underground. (Though not a militiaman, the bomber Timothy McVeigh attended their meetings and spent time on a Michigan farm with his fellow conspirator, Terry Nichols.) The Oklahoma City attack comes about a third of the way through Pollack's book, a real-world event that informs and shadows the fictional ones.
The novel's main characters are not antigovernment extremists. They are newcomers and outsiders, Richard and Louise Shapiro, who have moved to Michigan from Northern California with their young daughter in tow. It's an unlikely migration, precipitated by Richard's breakdown and depression. He's a therapist (as is Louise), and one of his patients has committed suicide. Then, during a camping trip, he accidentally started a forest fire. The move to Michigan, where he will work as a prison psychologist, is meant as a new start. But should they have bought the house in the tiny outlying town, just down the street from the Joyful Noise Church and the Wolverine Sportsmans Club? They're like the teenagers in horror movies who decide to check out the haunted mansion.
Of course the spacious Midwest is a more appealing place for the Shapiros to raise their child than high-pressure California. And neither Richard nor Louise is aware, at first, of just how much suspicion they engender. Richard is Jewish, Louise is not, although everyone in town assumes she is, and people are often cheerful and upfront about their prejudices.
Louise, despite her splendid qualifications and genuine affinity for young people, is only grudgingly given a part-time job as a social worker at the high school. The school's sole Jewish faculty member advises her to look for work in Ann Arbor instead. The janitor, Mike Korn hosts a hate-filled and conspiracy-minded radio program. Two particularly repulsive prison guards tell Richard the events in Oklahoma City are part of a Zionist plot.
All in all, it's not the ideal place to work out problems in one's marriage. Richard's depression takes an unattractive and self-involved shade. He snarls and sulks and refuses to help with their new house's extensive repairs and renovations. Louise feels lonely and abandoned.
Pollack is an engaging writer with a first-rate eye for the telling sociological detail. There is tension and menace when Richard or Louise encounters some new misunderstanding or threat. But since the author's intent is to explore intolerance, hatred and evil, it is not enough that these forces merely simmer and self-perpetuate. The stakes are raised, and escalating consequences play out.
Whatever our politics, there are times we all feel like foreigners in our own country, just as Louise becomes a foreigner in her own marriage. And it is Louise who carries the novel, with her good impulses, her fallibility and her wish for a transforming passion. We always hope that people can change. It is fitting that Louise provides just enough hope to bring the story home.
The novel's main characters are not antigovernment extremists. They are newcomers and outsiders, Richard and Louise Shapiro, who have moved to Michigan from Northern California with their young daughter in tow. It's an unlikely migration, precipitated by Richard's breakdown and depression. He's a therapist (as is Louise), and one of his patients has committed suicide. Then, during a camping trip, he accidentally started a forest fire. The move to Michigan, where he will work as a prison psychologist, is meant as a new start. But should they have bought the house in the tiny outlying town, just down the street from the Joyful Noise Church and the Wolverine Sportsmans Club? They're like the teenagers in horror movies who decide to check out the haunted mansion.
Of course the spacious Midwest is a more appealing place for the Shapiros to raise their child than high-pressure California. And neither Richard nor Louise is aware, at first, of just how much suspicion they engender. Richard is Jewish, Louise is not, although everyone in town assumes she is, and people are often cheerful and upfront about their prejudices.
Louise, despite her splendid qualifications and genuine affinity for young people, is only grudgingly given a part-time job as a social worker at the high school. The school's sole Jewish faculty member advises her to look for work in Ann Arbor instead. The janitor, Mike Korn hosts a hate-filled and conspiracy-minded radio program. Two particularly repulsive prison guards tell Richard the events in Oklahoma City are part of a Zionist plot.
All in all, it's not the ideal place to work out problems in one's marriage. Richard's depression takes an unattractive and self-involved shade. He snarls and sulks and refuses to help with their new house's extensive repairs and renovations. Louise feels lonely and abandoned.
Pollack is an engaging writer with a first-rate eye for the telling sociological detail. There is tension and menace when Richard or Louise encounters some new misunderstanding or threat. But since the author's intent is to explore intolerance, hatred and evil, it is not enough that these forces merely simmer and self-perpetuate. The stakes are raised, and escalating consequences play out.
Whatever our politics, there are times we all feel like foreigners in our own country, just as Louise becomes a foreigner in her own marriage. And it is Louise who carries the novel, with her good impulses, her fallibility and her wish for a transforming passion. We always hope that people can change. It is fitting that Louise provides just enough hope to bring the story home.
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