Adult Onset by Ann-Marie MacDonald
My rating: 4/5 cats
this is the lesbian version of The Yellow Wallpaper, proving that the stress of motherhood can be debilitating enough even without the added biological weight of postpartum depression. this book is a detailed character study of mary rose, more commonly known as “mister,” who is in the role of stay-at-home mom in toronto while her wife hilary has gone to calgary to direct a play, leaving mister in charge of five-year-old matthew and two-year-old maggie. over the course of the week, mister struggles with physical pain from a lingering childhood condition as well as the claustrophobia, insomnia, and crushing boredom of being the sole caregiver to two energetic children.
adding to her stress is having to deal with her brother, who is going through his own relationship issues, and her parents – a manic mother whose forgetfulness and irrational behavior might be the signs of something more serious, and her beloved father, with whom she is suddenly unable to communicate. being without hilary makes her second-guess the strength of their relationship and mourn for the carefree, sex-filled lives they left behind when they became parents. as the week drags on, mister is plagued by the quotidien irritants of misplaced paperwork and her own increased forgetfulness as well as memories resurfacing that cause her to question what she thought she knew of her past, as she also experiences shocking moments of violent rage and impulses to self-harm. and the icing on the emotional whirlwind is the writer’s block currently immobilizing her after the success of her first two young adult novels causes friends and fans to clamor for a third book in the trilogy. that’s a lot of plot, and there’s even more i haven’t gone into here, but macdonald layers her details well, and the reader only feels overwhelmed when she wants us to feel that way, in empathic shudders.
this book is a bit of a departure from macdonald’s first two novels. while it is still a family story, it is more compressed. both Fall on Your Knees and The Way the Crow Flies were giant, sprawling narratives, while this one follows a single character through a week’s worth of time, with occasional chapters recounting the family past through mister’s mother’s experiences. there are times when the writing gets a little ploddy, and it never grabbed my heart the way the other two did, but there’s still plenty of excellent writing here. she is so good at the minutiae of family life, and mister’s slow disintegration is perfectly written. she’s funny when she needs to be, with her organic-paranoia and “must childproof everything because – danger,” but the more prominent tone is of grief; of the slipping-away of the strength and stability of our parents, of the disjointed spikiness of a long-distance relationship, the loneliness of memories, the lies we tell ourselves, the excuses we make for wrongs done to us, and the helpless resistance as we inexorably find ourselves becoming our mothers.
there’s a lot of sad here, and a lot of self-discovery. it feels almost confessional, and there’s something raw and unfinished-feeling about it, but i think it works within this character’s story. it’s the messiness of family and memory, and how quickly things can collapse us. but not, ultimately, without hope. not my favorite of her novels, but still very solid.
