Backlist: Strange Ordinariness

Backlist: stmnge Ordinariness America! HGVlCW Rajni George Authenticity Deirdre Madden Graywolf Press htpp://www.graywolfpress.org 384 pages; paper, $15.00 At the beginning of Authenticity, Julia Fitzpatrick , an artist and one of the novel's centrifugal forces—rivaled only by her lover, the painter Roderic Kennedy — meets artistically repressed lawyer William Armstrong and dissuades him from suicide. What follows is the story ofthese characters' lives—a searching and conscientious attempt to show what makes each of them what they are and how each one has a bearing on the other. Set in Ireland, Authenticity is indeed a deft exploration of the artistic life and the responsibility it entails for those who decide to undertake it. Author Deirdre Madden has written several novels and has previously been short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her sophisticated commentary and the ease with which she describes the limitations and reaches of the artistic temperament are riveting. The novel really sparks when Julia's life is seen at its interstices with Roderic's. Julia's spiritual and almost vatic understanding of the natural world meets Roderic's ravaged life in a perfect match. Art has impacted both their lives, which has proved incredibly enabling for Julia in moving her towards urban recognition, yet somewhat dangerous for Roderic— in his case, art is linked to his failure as a husband and father and to his alcoholism. Art is a vital force, men, that pulls these characters together. Their relationship, particularly the special casualness of it and their refusal to conform to traditional domestic patterns, is championed throughout. For example, on the night they first discover their feelings for each other, Julia simply pulls the sofa out for the two of them and lets him know he will be spending the night. "The strange ordinariness of it" is what Roderic most remembers. Madden is at her best when describing "strange ordinariness," particularly in the scenes in which Julia and her father commune with nature, and, interestingly, in the subplot dealing with Roderic and his reticent brother Dennis's obsession with him. Dennis, somewhat of a foil for Roderic, has led a conventional life and perhaps the safest life, much like the lawyer William, except that he supports his brother in his artistic endeavors—if only out of a needy and vicarious pleasure. It is an odd relationship, Dennis spying on Roderic and his wife, and consumed by his brother's indisputable charm. Madden's agenda seems to be to promote the special charisma of artistic individuals, the ways in which their own forays into the world tease the fabric of the lives of those who surround them. In the scene where William attends Julia's exhibition with his two children, for example, his whole family is subsumed by an installation that is suggestive, with its velvet pulsating folds, of a woman's vagina. Madden's characters are cheeky—Julia enjoys William's discomfiture—and single-minded. They retain throughout a sort of distance, but one that betrays passion. The installation that represents Julia's life—a series of boxes with ribbons fluttering around them — is indeed representative of the novel as a whole: keenly observed and fragmented, if delightfully so. The book becomes a series of insightful studies of characters who achieve a somewhat odd balance in this story and in relation to one another. Madden's description ofthe limitations and reaches ofthe artistic temperament are riveting. This is because the special tension between William and Julia that is launched in the first chapter never entirely comes through. William is a great device, but the author seems to want him to be more significant than he ultimately becomes, Roderic's own tumultuous journey to selfhood taking on increasing impetus by the end ofthe novel. It is powerful to witness, this striving of artists to achieve the eponymous authenticity, the ways in which they witness this truth for the reader. Roderic's ruminations on his regular stints at hotels in between his Italian wife and children and his Irish home and family, both part of his vicious past, are evidence ofthe necessity of examining contemporary life: In turn, he examined each element of his life but there...