FICTION
Getting to Happy, by Terry McMillan, $27.95 Terry McMillan’s new novel, “Getting to Happy,” is a sequel to “Waiting to Exhale” that resumes the story of a group of black women friends some 15 years later. All four women are back, but this time, of course, they’re middle-aged. The issues of their youth have morphed into new ones.
There are children now from failed relationships and grandchildren, too, along with failed businesses and second mortgages. Each of the four is in her 50s, or about to be, and not quite sure what to do with herself.
McMillan has said she didn’t plan to write a sequel, but her old characters “began to reclaim their place in my heart, and, like old friends you haven’t seen since college, I wondered how they might be faring now.” She fleshes them out by shifting the point of view, sometimes writing in first person, sometimes in third, resulting in a crosshatch of perspectives. Her dialogue remains superb.
These women have all kinds of contemporary challenges, including elderly mothers, deadbeat dads, hard-up sisters and a changing job market. They’ve gained weight, gone through menopause and suffered memory loss. They’re lonely.
They decide, individually and together, to upgrade their lives, to “get happy.”
The difference between this book and “Waiting to Exhale” is that “happy” has a different meaning now. For these women, it’s no longer about the perfect job or the perfect man. It’s a more complicated notion.
The theme of addiction carries through the novel, and that’s no accident. McMillan suggests that Bernadine’s struggle with antidepressants, Robin’s trips to the mall and Gloria’s struggle with food are all symptoms of the same thing. The notion of “getting to happy” means doing away with self-delusion. And, according to McMillan, it also means forgiveness.
The outrage and the disappointment so vividly portrayed in the opening chapters must ultimately melt into understanding, even love, if possible.
Some readers may feel that “Getting to Happy” doesn’t offer many surprises. The ladies learn to undo their vices, to visualize better lives and, through meditation, to breathe. And while this makes sense, in terms of the characters, it feels somewhat anticlimactic given the earlier chapters. Still, there’s an integrity that isn’t compromised here. McMillan clearly respects her characters and her readers, too.
FICTION
Russian Winter, by Daphne Kalotay, $25.99 “Russian Winter,” Daphne Kalotay’s first novel, is a magnificent tale of love, loss, betrayal and redemption. Shifting between Moscow and Boston, and alternating past with present, the story centers on Nina Revskaya, a star of the Bolshoi Ballet.
Her fame peaks during the dark days of the Cold War. In 1952, despite warnings that “they find you and break your legs,” Nina defects and goes on to have a celebrated international career.
Now old and infirm, she lives in Boston’s Back Bay and has decided to sell her treasured jewelry collection. Drew Brooks, the associate director of fine jewelry from the auction house, visits to compose a list of the gems and begins to ask Nina questions that open a Pandora’s box of memories and mysteries.
Characters appear like an endless stacking nest of Matryoshka dolls, one more fascinating and intriguing than the next. Among the cast are Nina’s husband, the celebrated poet Viktor Elsin; Viktor’s insidious mother and her French-speaking bird; the professor and translator Grigori Solodin, who wishes “he knew the truth. (It was) impossible ever to be fully himself until he knew his own history”; the ballerina Vera Borodina, Nina’s childhood friend whose parents had “been taken”; the provocative Jewish composer Aron Gershtein, who is in love with Vera.
The complex story is multilayered and labyrinthine so that the reader, just like these characters, does not know whom to believe or distrust. And while there is fascinating information and insight about ballet, jewels, music, art and politics, the emotional center of the book holds everything together.
Toward the end, with many unanswered questions swirling, the author lets the truth ebb and flow until a final riptide of revelations leaves the reader profoundly moved.
