The fight to unravel those apron strings
Of Men and Their Mothers
By Mameve Medwed
Morrow, 289 pp., $24.95
There's sugar and spice and everything nice. And then there's Ina Pollock.
Matriarch of the Pollock Poultry potpie empire, Ina worked overtime to sabotage her son's marriage to Maisie Grey. She belittled Maisie. She ridiculed Maisie. She hounded her about all matters great and small. And, in a particularly memorable episode of villainy, she invaded the hospital birthing room while Maisie was in the throes of contractions. After baby Tommy emerged and Maisie lay waiting to embrace her firstborn, Ina swooped in, grabbed the baby, and sang him his first lullaby.
And though Maisie's marriage to the foxy but feckless Rex ended years before, she still finds herself yoked to Ina, who intrudes at every opportunity and tries her best to influence the upbringing of Tommy, who is 16 when the action unfolds in Mameve Medwed's "Of Men and Their Mothers."
Maisie herself relates the story in a chatty, confessional tone. She laces her narrative with many chummy asides to the reader, as in: "I guess I should introduce myself" and "Maybe you think I'm being petty." It's an unnecessary strategy that grows cloying after a while. Then there is Maisie's tendency to offer too-familiar philosophical insights. Among the words of wisdom: "There's comfort in the ordinary"; "At sixteen you think you're immortal"; and "Just when everything is looking fine, ominous weather, as well as thunderclouds of misery, can surprise you." A more attentive editor could have easily pared these clichés from the book, a book that's buoyed throughout by Medwed's nervy sense of humor. Indeed, on the whole "Of Men and Their Mothers" is a pleasurable confection - a thoroughly absorbing page-turner, even if it doesn't wind up lingering in the reader's memory.
Medwed is the author of four other novels, including the best-selling "How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life," which was named an Honor Book in 2007 by the Massachusetts Book Awards. A resident of Cambridge, she sets "Of Men and Their Mothers" in and around neighboring Somerville (Maisie notes that half of her toilet seat and her entire washbasin are technically in Cambridge). Medwed creates a vivid sense of place, lampooning Harvard as the center of the known universe.
Thirty-nine-year-old Maisie is the owner and sole operator of Factotum Inc. In this capacity she ministers to the needs of her largely professorial clientele, doing everything from typing up lectures for a womanizing Joyce scholar to clipping the toenails of a retired philosophy professor (also a womanizer). Maisie is accustomed to working solo; when the book opens, an on-the-way-out lawyer boyfriend foists an employee on her. The employee, Darlene Lattanzio, is a single mom who is at risk of losing custody of her infant son. Darlene is a pro bono client of Maisie's on-and-mainly-off paramour, who believes that steady employment will help Darlene retain custody. And so Maisie finds herself the boss of a young woman who is sorely lacking direction in life.
Medwed has a great eye for physical detail. She reserves her most evocative prose for Ina, whom she describes as a "mistress of turkey wattles, incubator of jowls." A deft prose stylist, she peppers her writing with zingy one-liners and memorable turns of phrase. She is especially adroit at crafting dialogue that keeps the narrative humming.
The cast of characters includes Gabriel Doyle, Maisie's über-niceguy love interest; September Silva, Tommy's goth girlfriend; and Darlene's breasts. Yes, Darlene's breasts - and specifically their function as milk supplier - play a critical role in the narrative as it unfolds. But even they are upstaged by the formidable Ina, who serves as the most compelling counterpoint to Maisie.
While Medwed's novel is largely a feel-good tale of redemption - Maisie, Darlene, and September find inner reserves of strength, and all change for the better - its chief asset is the one character who refuses to acknowledge the need for self-improvement. Ina is an equal-opportunity insulter, lobbing choice words at anyone who threatens her stranglehold on her prize possession: her son, Rex. Though Medwed's portrait of Ina occasionally teeters close to caricature, on the whole this mother-in-law from Hades is an inspired comic creation.
Nearly as compelling is September, a budding poet and musician whose filthy feet, skull rings, and candor about sexual matters prove unsettling for Maisie. Determined to follow a different path than Ina, Maisie decides to give her son's girlfriend a chance - a choice that has unintended consequences. So many of Medwed's characters rub up against classic stereotypes: At first glance September comes off as a sullen teenager, Darlene as an unfit welfare mother. But Medwed refuses to let the stereotypes stand. Her characters don't remain inside convenient little boxes - even if they do all travel toward a happy ending.
Amy Kroin's reviews have appeared in The 