Three Stages of Amazement By Carol Edgarian (Scribner; 298 pages; $25)
It's hard to feel sorry for the superrich, even (maybe especially) when they lose a lot of money. Those of us with no ties to Bernie Madoff probably didn't lose much sleep over the clients he defrauded. Madoff is a frequent subject of conversation in Carol Edgarian's timely new novel, "Three Stages of Amazement," set in the Bay Area during the recent recession.
This is a story about what happens when the wheel turns, and those who have been on top tip from their perch. Cutting between the mansions of Pacific Heights and the investment firms of Sand Hill Road, the book explores what occurs when expectations don't deliver and entitlement gives way to disappointment.
At the heart of the novel is Lena Rusch, a young mother married to a surgeon who has sunk their family assets into developing a surgical robotic device, for which he is seeking a $20 million investment. But this robot is years from completion, and investors aren't taking the kind of risks they used to. Just when he's getting desperate, Lena's astronomically wealthy uncle, a banker named Cal Rusch, dangles an offer of assistance. The problem is, Lena holds him responsible for ruining her father's life, and she forbids her husband from considering the offer. No matter what he does, the family's stability is at stake; and things were already wobbly.
When we first meet Lena, she is deeply in grief. "It lurked in the china cabinet and in the waiting room at the dentist's and behind the switch on the hall light. It twined itself inside the tongue of sneakers and the click of pens and the heels of socks." She recently delivered premature twins, one of whom died at birth. The other survived, but barely, with underdeveloped lungs and a host of complications and accompanying worries. Lena's husband is almost never home, leaving her alone to deal with trips to the emergency room so frequent they're almost tedious, but no less terrifying.
Edgarian beautifully captures the fierceness of this mother's love for her chronically sick baby, as well as the toll that the monotony and anxiety take - all those hours spent sitting in a steamy bathroom, trying to clear the tiny blocked passageways of her lungs.
In an achingly memorable scene, Lena overhears a cluster of competitive mothers gossiping about her daughter, calling her a vegetable, and accusing Lena of being obtuse to the fact that she will never be OK, let alone normal. They're being cruel, but also honest, and only then does Lena recognize the truth of what they're saying. Lonely, frightened but still spirited, passionate at the core, she is tempted back into the arms of an old lover who reappears, offering the possibility of an escape from the life in which she's ensnared.
Edgarian dips gracefully into different points of view, enlarging the scope of the story, which becomes about a community of interconnected people as much as it's about the individuals who make it up. We get insight into the minds of Lena and her husband, their toddler son and the Central American nanny, who takes a pay cut to keep her job.
One of the most vivid characters is Cal Rusch, Lena's estranged uncle. Walled off in his fortress, he surveys the city, his family and minions with sneering contempt. The man doesn't seem to love anyone, not even his wife - a gaunt society matron whose life accomplishment is her closet of couture - or his children, at least the legitimate ones. When his daughter comes to his firm, seeking investment for a nonprofit venture, he advises the partners to turn her down.
Discussions of contemporary fiction too often focus on the tepid question of whether a character is "likable," as if the goal of reading a novel were to have a merely pleasant encounter. Edgarian doesn't waste too much time worrying about whether you're going to like her characters. They are larger than life in their ambitions and longings, and while you might not want to hang out over tea, they are fascinatingly flawed, both as people and as representatives of a certain social class that was not used to making compromises or being let down, until recently.
Cal Rusch cuts the figure of an aging monarch from one of Shakespeare's later plays, the ones interestingly caught between tragedy and comedy. "Three Stages of Amazement" is equally hard to classify. While it's hard to feel genuinely sorry for these characters, Edgarian doesn't ridicule them or their sorrows. The fall from privilege is both humbling and humanizing. Rich or poor, disappointment is part of growing up, learning to accept a less-than-perfect outcome, to tolerate ambiguity. In the end, these are just people living their lives, struggling to get by like the rest of us.
Malena Watrous is the author of the novel "If You Follow Me." E-mail comments to books@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page GF - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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