Paint It Black

My first review of a fairly new novel (there will be more, I promise), written by one of my favorite contemporary authors, Janet Fitch.

PAINT IT BLACK:



Janet Fitch, the author of WHITE OLEANDER, is a mistress of poetic prose and conductor of the wrenching, heartfelt emotional toil that she flourishes on her female characters. Her dialogue is so believable, rich and staggeringly real that it is hard to imagine that these characters exist only on the page and not out in the world. The Los Angeles she envisions in her novels is bruised and dented; a new model car with the paint already chipped and the interior gutted, but the radio is still intact and it’s playing nothing but memories.

Her second novel takes place in this L.A., shortly after the tragic killing of John Lennon in the New York of 1980. Josie Tyrell is a punker, a transplant from Bakersfield with a level of self-loathing that rivals any of Carl Jung’s most debased patients. A part-time nude model and occasional student-film actress, Josie lives the life of a free spirit, a young woman tied down by nothing other than her own limitations. When her boyfriend kills himself in a Twentynine Palms motel room, the fragility and aimlessness of her life is exposed, leading to a journey of self-examination and eventual transformation.

Her underground world of clubs and unabashed excess collides with the world of piano recitals and cultured restraint when she meets Michael Faraday, a painter with a complicated past. That past he shrouds in misdirection and half-answers, exposing an intimate yet ultimately falsified version of himself to the trusting, loving Josie. It is only upon his death, and after his depressed, suffering girlfriend enmeshes herself into the lives of Michael’s family, that new versions replace the old. Secrets are revealed, lies are unmasked, half-truths are shoved under the hot white glare of full exposure.

The most intriguing aspect of the novel is the complicated, oftentimes nasty and violent relationship between the two most grief-stricken survivors Michael leaves behind. From the venomous phone call Michael’s mother, Meredith, has with Josie shortly after the young man’s suicide, to the co-dependent relationship they cultivate as short-term roommates, every interaction between the two women is heady and filled with danger.

Meredith Loewy, concert pianist and possible psychopath, is one of the richest, most compelling and intriguing antagonists I’ve read since John Steinbeck’s Cathy Ames in EAST OF EDEN. She is at once sympathetic and completely despicable, a woman with more pain to bear than she is capable of carrying on her own. Josie becomes her crutch, as well as a substitute child, there to simultaneously remind Meredith of the son she once had and the son she no longer possesses. This description of her, from halfway through the novel, illustrates the majesty of her beauty, as well as the crushing magnitude of her affliction:

“The green eyes, their huge startled expression, the length and curl of the lashes, the slow flick of wide eyelid. The ache of loss, profound as if someone had gone into her bones and scooped out the marrow.”

The novel is filled with this same amazing detail and language, rhythm and mood. The overall tone is a tad bleak -- which is unavoidable when dealing with suicide and its effects on those left behind as its subject -- and at times I found it difficult to emerge from the haze of depression and disillusionment that permeates the novel. That said, it was very much an experiential read for me, sucking me straight into the inner torment of Josie and her struggles to make sense of Michael’s death and her own, out of control, life.

“She had to stay in the icy place, the numb place, and their warmth threatened to melt her just when she needed the cold” is a perfect example of this depth of sorrow and feeling that drives Fitch’s novel. At times, Josie’s suffering is almost unbearable to the reader. But I think that may just be the point. It forces you to engage, rather then look away, challenges you to walk four hundred pages in the combat boots of a girl most people would normally ignore on the street. Josie is a force to be reckoned with, and one to be compassionate towards, to find empathy for.

In this particular passage, a favorite of mine, there are echoes of Virginia Woolf’s TO THE LIGHTHOUSE:

“Nobody knew anyone else’s private world. In the end, they were all alone as inmates on death row, side by side. Sometimes you could get a look at one another with a little pocket mirror, cell to cell, but that was all.”

What Fitch manages to do in this novel is give us a look into the private worlds of Josie Tyrell and Meredith Loewy (and even, to some degree, Michael Faraday) with a tool much more powerful than a mere pocket mirror. She illuminates their interiors with a klieg light, offering us an effulgent gaze into their very essence, while being mindful to pull back a little – just a little – in order to allow the characters to remain at their heightened level of verisimilitude. Leaving their realism intact. And their resonance alive.