Thursday, January 16, 1997
BOOK:
Hint of magical realism affirms bittersweet emotions of twin
sisters’ parallel yet different livesBy Cheryl Klein
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Without peeking at the back flap, it’s clear that author Lisa
Grunwald has children. And probably a sister as well, if her latest
novel, "New Year’s Eve," is any indication of her own family
experiences.
Of course this isn’t quite fair  works of fiction are by
no means necessarily autobiographical. But the relationships
between parents and children, husbands and wives, and, most
prominently, between sisters in "New Year’s Eve" are ripe with the
bittersweet emotions of one who has lived it.
And who hasn’t been envious of a sibling? Or guiltily harsh when
reprimanding a child? Or concerned that the parent who was once a
caretaker suddenly needs to be cared for? Grunwald draws on several
archetypal standbys for subject matter  birth, death, love.
She weaves them into a simple yet touching story of twin sisters
who, even after they stopped dressing alike, live their lives along
simultaneously parallel and intersecting lines.
As soon as page three, narrator Erica confesses, "(Heather) had
been born only 22 minutes before me, but I believed that in those
22 minutes resided her power and her control."
But this is more than a contrite tale of the twin who had it all
and the bitter sibling in the shadows. Heather is far from perfect,
especially after her three-year-old son, David, is hit by a car and
killed.
Erica’s daughter, Sarah, is the most obviously and strangely
affected by her cousin’s death. When David was alive, the toddlers
shared a closeness that temporarily revived Erica and Heather’s own
childhood camaraderie.
But Sarah begins to channel David’s reports from heaven, which
range from the charming (heaven, apparently, consists of several
preschool-esque stages including Arts and Crafts, Snack and Gym) to
the eerie (David guides Sarah in constructing a doll house that
looks exactly like one Heather and her husband are considering
buying but have not yet seen).
A desperate Heather encourages her niece’s seeming clairvoyance,
but Erica is concerned for Sarah’s mental heath and jealous of her
daughter’s affection for the aunt who can do no wrong. Erica’s
anger is genuine and cathartic to any reader who knows how painful
it is to despise the ones you love.
Erica’s family is not dysfunctional in any daytime talk show
sense of the word, but rather in the no less serious way that every
family is. All the characters are refreshingly human. Grunwald
successfully captures the frustration surrounding a child who sees
her parents as the bad guys. While many books for adults paint
children as cherubic darlings good for a few giggles and "aaws,"
Grunwald lets us know that, yes, kids can be brats. They can be
infuriating, time-consuming and relentless. But we love them
anyway.
Though one of the novel’s greatest accomplishments is its
serious look at the often glossed-over time of early motherhood,
college students will relate to Erica’s struggle to distance
herself from her childhood. Part of her wants to return to her
idealized (though in reality, imperfect) youth  hence a
series of flashbacks to New Year’s Eve, 1958, 1963, etc. The
holiday is a delicately portrayed family ritual, and it is painful
if liberating when she spends her first New Year’s Eve away from
her father and sister.
Grunwald moves through three decades of New Year’s Eves with
easy and believable dialogue, creating a portrait of the ’90s
family with a little magical realism thrown in. But while the
characters of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his colleagues accept the
supernatural as casually as they accept the sun coming up,
Grunwald’s fast-paced, upper middle class Americans often try to
deny it.
How much of Sarah’s observations are childish wishful thinking
and how much is real ghost story material is left to the reader to
decide. But Grunwald proves that this genre can indeed have a
(slightly altered) place in American literature and that "New
Year’s Eve" deserves a place on any reader’s bookshelf.