"NIGHTMARES DRESSED LIKE OTHER NIGHTMARES IN TALE OF SUICIDE"
Reviewed by Ani Johnson
Posted April 21, 2015
Women's Fiction | Contemporary
From Oedipus Rex to Monster-in-Law, stories about romantic
love are often
equally stories about parental love -- and hate.
Kathryn Craft's novel, THE FAR END OF HAPPY, follows in
this tradition. It is the
story of a man's suicidal standoff with police. Which is
really the story of a
ruined marriage. Which is really the story of three
mothers.
At the opening of the novel two women are trying to do
right by their children.
Ronnie, a 35-year-old journalism-trained farmer, is
getting her two young sons
ready for school while keeping an eye out for Jeff, her
soon-to-be ex-husband.
Jeff is supposed to move out that day. In another part of
town, Ronnie's mother,
Beverly, is surfing online listings for a place that
Ronnie and her boys can live
more permanently.
The third mother, Jeff's mother, Janet, is enjoying a
breakfast of pumpkin pie
and coffee spiked from her trusty flask -- a detail that
will become tragically
unsurprising as the day progresses.
What Ronnie expects to be a stressful day turns into a
hellish one when Jeff,
drunk and waving a shotgun, turns up at the house and
threatens to kill
himself. Ronnie, concerned only for the safety of her
children, calls 911.
The book is broken into eleven sections for the eleven
hours Jeff, holed up in the office
of their farm store, spends in the ensuing standoff with
police. But within the
hour-by-hour story of the action, flashbacks show the
longer arc of Jeff's life
from the points of view of Ronnie, Beverly and Janet. This
fluidity underlines one
of the principle concerns of the book: what do the
minutes, hours and days of a
life add up to? When Jeff takes the tally his answer is:
not much.
He writes to Ronnie, "I have nothing positive to offer
anyone. Why else would someone spend twenty years tending
the same bar?"
The reasons for Jeff's suicidality are complex and
various. His finances are in a
shambles, his marriage is about to end, he works a dead
end job. But as the tale
unspools, it becomes more and more obvious that Jeff's
relationship with his
parents, and even Ronnie's with hers, form the
undergirding of his depression.
Remember Janet's flask? She is medicating herself for the
pain that comes with
feeling unloved, just as she made Jeff feel throughout his
childhood. Ronnie's
need for stability and meaning that runs so counter to
Jeff's more go-with-the-
flow outlook stems from the constant instability Beverly's
string of boyfriends
caused. And Beverly is herself still dealing with a pain
that goes back thirty-five years.
This is where Craft excels, in telling a complex,
compassionate tale. The
present day scenes of the standoff are less compelling.
The dialogue is wooden
and the pace languid. But that is not the real story here,
anyway. The real story
is the way the dots of three women's lives connect to form
a picture of a
troubled man.
In a poignant understatement, Ronnie sums up THE FAR END
OF HAPPY: "Mother-child
relationships are complicated."
SUMMARY
Ronnie's husband is supposed to move out today. But when
Jeff pulls into the driveway drunk, with a shotgun in the
front seat, she realizes nothing about the day will go as
planned. The next few hours spiral down in a flash, unlike the slow
disintegration of their marriage-and whatever part of that
painful unraveling is Ronnie's fault, not much else
matters now but these moments. Her family's lives depend
on the choices she will make-but is what's best for her
best for everyone? Based on a real event from the author's life, The Far End
of Happy is a chilling story of one troubled man, the
family that loves him, and the suicide standoff that will
change all of them forever.
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