Almost Book

Unstable novelist Sophy is almost divorced from her husband Will, whom she left at their home on chichi Swansea Island. One day in NYC, in bed with her studly lover Daniel, she gets the news that Will has been discovered dead. It seems he died a few weeks ago in what used to be their family home; no one knows exactly the cause of death. Suicide? Heart attack?

Sophy heads for Swansea Island, where she must confront her own past, the alcoholism she thought she'd left behind, Will's adult children (her stepchildren), Will's first wife, a lover from long ago whom she still regards as a friend, and the ex-lover's wife who clearly distrusts her. Staying for the most part clear of her need for booze, negotiating around the inlaws, Sophy tries to find out the truth about Will's demise . . .

The setup is what you might expect for a mystery novel, and for much of the time I was reading this book I kept expecting there to be some kind of mystery-novel payoff. As I approached the end, though, I realized I was reading something different, with quite different rewards. Elizabeth Benedict does quite consciously utilize the narrative techniques of mystery novels dating back more than a century -- I'm referring to the "had I but known" school, upon whose methods Benedict draws at the end of most chapters. At the same time she's subverting the mystery genre . . . while often being very funny, often raunchily so.

The standout character in the novel, though, isn't Sophy or Daniel or any of Will's left-behind family. It's Vicki, the eldest of the four Vietnamese kids whom Daniel and his wife Gail adopted before Gail had an accident that threw her into a probably terminal coma. Daniel is self-centered without the slightest recognition that he is so; Sophy is just beginning to recognize and deal with her self-centeredness; but Vicki offers a glorious declaration of love.

I laughed aloud several times while reading Almost, which might seem difficult to reconcile with the fact that I came away from the book feeling very much moved. It's that kind of novel.