Bye Bye Love

Daria Walker's life is the picture of domestic bliss. A highly accomplished cook, she spends her days gracefully dishing up all manner of delicacies for her happy husband Ross and two happy daughters, growing herbs and flowers in her backyard in a wealthy Boston suburb, and lavishing love on her dog and two cats. Not just a housewife, Daria is a successful--even mildly famous--cookbook author, with a secretary, an agent, an editor, and adoring fans. In the opening scene of Fly Away Home, she returns from a grueling book promotion tour, aching to be home with her happy family and their happy life.

Suddenly the sound of the engines changed as the flight attendant rapidly recited that landing litany, make sure your tray tables are upright. Daria hugged herself, glancing around her seat for stray items. Home... She had suffered from bad dreams. But now almost immediately she was being returned to Ross, her love, and things would be better between them. He would have missed her Now things would be just fine.

Oh, no they won't Not this time, not ever again. We sense, long before innocent Daria does, that all this happiness won't contain itself for long.

Halfway through the first chapter of this new novel by the talented poet and novelist Marge Piercy, one wonders what use there is in continuing. Fly Away Home, we can tell from the blurb, will be the intense and anguished story of the breakup of a marriage, and the subsequent discovery by a warm but timid woman that there is a whole world open to her. It is a familiar story; even under Piercy's talented pen--she is known for Woman on the Edge of Time and Braided Lives--what on earth could make it fresh?

The answer lies primarily in the plot, which holds quite a few unconventional twists. This almost schizophrenic novel simply cannot decide whether it is a psychological drama of a woman's awakening to her own potential, or a slick, fast-paced, murder-and-arson thriller In trying to touch both bases. Piercy has had to sacrifice many of the best elements of either genre.

As Daria endures Ross's increasing verbal abuse and fiendish behavior long past the moment when the reader wants to hurl the book at the wall, she gradually becomes aware that in their 22 years of marriage, she has never known what exactly he does, besides lawyering. Turns out he's involved in all sorts of sordid and shady dealings--with two of her brothers involved, no less.

Piercy's few attempts to elicit any sympathy for this adulterous husband seem half-hearted at best, and after a torrent of abuse Ross finally walks out, asks Daria to sign papers that would leave her almost no claim to their joint property, and demands an immediate divorce. And then begins Daria's long search for the class that will help her understand her husband, his business dealings, and the choices that she now faces.

Had Piercy chosen to focus her attention on the psychology, the human aspect of the situation, she might have produced a very powerful novel. There are the seeds of several very real and dramatic relationships, particularly between Daria and her mother, and between Daria and her daughters. Perhaps the truest line in the novel is the first one:

Like many women, Daria both loved her mother and prayed not to become like her.

Piercy could probe much more deeply into Daria's dual struggle not to take the same verbal and psychological abuse that her mother took from her crude, hulking, selfish father and to still honor her mother. But after introducing Daria's quandary, Piercy abandons this conflict in favor of the cheap thrills of the arson story.

In the same manner, Piercy deals minimally with the complex web of anger and guilt, love and mistrust that a divorce must create for Daria's daughters. The reader feels cheated, suspecting that if she only gave it attention, this author could produce some memorable fiction. Instead, Robin is on Ross's side and Tracy on Daria's, and, Io and behold, it all works out in the end.

Meanwhile, Daria has been drawn into the web of intrigue surrounding a string of mysterious fires in the dilapidated buildings that she has just discovered her husband owns. With her new group of friends, the very tenants of the buildings being destroyed. Daria investigates the dark secrets in Ross's other life.

The fast pace of the novel and the frequently less-than-plausible turns of events make Fly Away Home a bit much to swallow at times. But Piercy's prose is grounded in a very realistic portrayal of a very real woman, and her constant mention of Boston area landmarks, restaurants, and neighborhoods remind us that, yes, this is a real story. In similar moments, in fact. Daria reminds herself of the details that make her life real. She has a habit of counting her blessings, convincing herself that she exists and is happy--reminding herself of her identify.

In fact, this is one of the most powerful and subtle tools Piercy uses to shape her heroine, who otherwise would be a very ordinary woman. But Daria's constant need for things to be in their place, for details to be correct and manageable and solid, betray her very fragile sense of self, her modernist need to be in control of the little things. In its better moments, this characterization is reminiscent of Mrs. Dalloway in its emphasis on the details that no one else would need to notice, that seem to take on mythic proportions in such an acutely sensitive character.

There are quite a few virtues to Fly Away Home, most of them involving Daria herself. Initially nondescript, she begins to emerge as a witty and complex person, we discover her only as she discovers herself. Unfortunately, none of the other characters is nearly as well-conceived, with, the exception of Daria's new lover, Tom. However, most of the male characters. Ross in particular, are saddled with flat, awkward, cliched lines. Ross in constantly telling Daria that he needs his own space, needs to discover who he is, and that she is stifling him.

"The seeds of discontent were planted long before." His voice was resonant. "In neglect they have grown tall. Will I forever feel I have negotiated an unacceptable compromise for myself?"

And, when she protests, he answers, "You think you can caox me back into a little box. But you can't."

Although the dichotomy of psychodrama and mystery thriller splinters its focus and perhaps detracts from the overall effect of the novel. Piercy, at times, achieves quite a bit with both strands. For those who are fans of her candidly graphic powerful poetry, Piercy's newest fiction may be a slight disappointment. But she remains a serious novelist whose passion for the truth about her characters cannot be ignored.