The events of Sept. 11 stole much, but arguably the greatest loss was a general sense of security in the future. No longer was there the illusion of predictability, the feeling that, except for life’s most unfortunate coincidences, things would continue mostly as expected. Tension heightened by the lack of a knowable future lies at the heart of Carolyn See’s latest, “There Will Never Be Another You.”
This is a story told in vignettes, alternating primarily between the first-person voice of Edith and the third-person narrative of her son, Dr. Phil Fuchs. Edith loses her husband on Sept. 10, 2001, and her first thought on seeing planes crash into the towers the next day is, “The only human being in the world who ever loved me – except for my goofy son, maybe – died last night. Died in my arms, breathed his last. Excuse me, God, but you are going to have to do better than that if you want to impress me.”
Fast-forward to 2007. Phil, a dermatologist practicing at the UCLA hospital, notices an uncommon number of dead feral cats littering the campus. It could be the work of a biological terrorist or perhaps that of an annoyed neighbor; it’s hard to tell.
Phil is not in a good position to sort things out. His ornamental wife, Felicia, is on the verge of a midlife crisis. Their children are little better off. Eloise, a high-school freshman, is smug. Vernon, finishing his fifth-grade year, is a child heading for trouble, but his parents have no clue of how to head things off.
While things melt down at home, Phil is invited into a new job at the UCLA hospital. He finds himself part of an emergency bioterror first-response team. It’s a role that, on many levels, he can’t get his mind around. When the commander addresses him as “soldier,” he looks over his shoulder to see who the guy is talking to.
The set-up is fraught with dark possibilities, and See touches upon everything from marital woes to social implosion. Edith spends a lot of her time journaling about her son and his unworthy wife, so there is little surprise when many of her long-held expectations come to pass. Phil’s attention is split between difficulties at home and at work. He is dealing with his wife’s desire for another child, his son’s disinterest in school in particular and the future in general, or strange outbreaks of disease that could signal the beginning of the last days of modern culture.
“There Will Never Be Another You” is a novel built around the fruits of anxiety, personal and societal. Each of the three generations pictured deals with the issues differently. Edith has, in many ways, already seen the worst in the death of her husband. Current events cannot deal her any rougher hand. For Phil and Vernon, though, the stakes are different. Not because Phil has much of a chance to remake his path – though some of his choices are surprising – but because his son’s future is up for grabs.
See’s writing is vibrant, and the structure of the novel, with its alternating points of view, is unusual. In lesser hands, this novel would be just another disaster story, one of a 21st-century plague decimating society. The novel’s weakness lies in the characters, who stand as types more than real people, making them difficult to get close to.
The events rocking lives in “There Will Never Be Another You” are smaller, not nearly as well-defined as perhaps an outbreak of SARS or avian flu. And in many ways, that makes the dilemmas more human-scale and more real. Because these days our lives aren’t shaped by reactions to these larger threats that haven’t quite yet materialized but by the more general knowledge that whatever the future may hold, it is, after Sept. 11, not as secure as we’d once believed it to be.
Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer who reviews books for The Denver Post and Buzz in the ‘Burbs.
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There Will Never Be Another You
By Carolyn See
Random House, 242 pages, $24.95
