The Edge of Sadness Book

My first thought when I read the initial chapters of "The Edge of Sadness" was why I was laughing so much. I was anticipating long hours stewing in a miry bog of despair. I did not expect the generous dose of humor that was evident throughout the novel whose core theme was sadness. I enjoyed the vivid use of metaphor and similes that conjured up the hilarity of a human face or a social situation. One of the earliest mental pictures was that of a priest preaching to a layer cake. Father Hugh Kennedy likened his congregation to "an incredible layer cake of intellect and imagination". The challenges of priesthood became obvious: "How do you talk about God Almighty to a layer cake?"

The Edge of Sadness is a somber story about a failing middle-aged priest in an unnamed New England port city and his relationship with members of the prominent Carmody family. The story began with Father Hugh Kennedy being invited to Charlie Carmody's 82nd birthday party. Charlie was a mean spirited, wily old capitalist fox and a destructive parent. The motivation for Charlie's sudden and superfluous social overtures toward Father Hugh was the object of speculation. It was at this party that Father Hugh, newly rehabilitated from alcoholism, became reconnected with his childhood friend, Father John Carmody (priest of the posh St Raymond's parish), Helen Carmody (a love interest from his youthful days), and old friends of the Carmody and Kennedy families (e.g., the funnily cantankerous Bucky whose tag line when criticizing his friends was "I mention no names.").

Good books have an unmistakable touch of realism. All the characters went about their daily existence trying to find contentment in their current stations in life and no one was ostensibly sad. Is it not familiar that sadness hovers on the periphery of our existence and takes us by surprise? Father Hugh said it well, "...this queer, causeless sadness, is not a regular thing with me - it comes very seldom, really, but when it does it comes with leaping unexpectedness, from nowhere with the speed of light: the blizzard from the blue sky on a day in early May."

The edge of sadness came in many guises and cut people up deeply. For Charlie Carmody, it was ironic that his birthday party should be the occasion he let on that he "was happy but lonesome". For Helen, who had seemingly married well, sadness was not finding what she had hoped to find in her marriage. For many, sadness as in the case of Father Hugh's dad was a private sorrow that could not be shared with anyone. And for all of us, the edge of sadness could well be the sudden realization that "we are moved steadily, day by day, to the once distant world of the old" and toward the certainty of death. Charlie's lament when he summoned Father Hugh to his death bed was heartbreaking, "I hate to go. I hate it like the devil... There's no such thing as dyin' happy."

The most salient thing that struck me was the one small way in which "The Edge of Sadness" reminded me of "The Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. Like Kurtz, Charlie encountered "The horror! The horror!" Father Hugh's reply to Charlie's pressing question while he lay dying took me back to Marlow's reply to Kurtz's fianceé about Kurtz's last words. Father Hugh's response was perfectly understandable, "And what could I say? I said the only thing that it was possible to say and still remain a human being."

Thus, the novel plumbed the depths of human concerns and unraveled the inscrutable. Yet the treatment was by no means moralistic or sentimental. Edwin O' Connor was honest and sincere in the way he portrayed the unsavory manner in which his characters thought and conducted themselves. Quite frequently, Father Hugh admitted unabashedly how he had felt or was stupefied by a turn of conversation for which no decent response was possible ("And this was so unexpected that I had nothing to say."). Sometimes, there are indeed no answers to the quandaries in which we find ourselves.

The Edge of Sadness, winner of the 1962 Putlizer Prize for Fiction, is unreservedly worthy of five bright stars.