Loved One
By Aisha Muharrar
Viking/Penguin Random House
Upon learning that Aisha Muharrar was an Emmy Award-winning writer/producer of three shows I adore (“Parks & Recreation,” “The Good Place,” and “Hacks”), I couldn’t get my hands fast enough on her debut novel “Loved One.”
While I didn't see God, I wasn't exactly disappointed, either. The book’s opening scene – wherein our narrator, 30 year old jewelry artist Julia, is eulogizing her best friend (and first love) Gabe, who suffered a fatal fall in a hotel room shower – even feels cinematic, up to and including a surprising, last-sentence twist.
Without giving it away, I'll just say that because of Gabe’s sudden, accidental death, Julia is left with questions about their relationship that she’ll never have answered, nor will she ever likely ever achieve that satisfying, frightfully elusive thing called “closure.”
So when Gabe’s mom tells Julia she’d like to recover a handful of Gabe’s personal items – like a guitar and some sheet music of sentimental value, and a Mets baseball cap from his mostly estranged father – Julia hatches a plan to travel to England, to the apartment Gabe most recently shared with his chic ex-girlfriend Elizabeth. (As Muharrar artfully describes it, “It was a relief to have something to do, other than crying and driving. I was a set of house keys buried at the bottom of a purse, finally plucked out, jangling with purpose.”)
Perhaps not surprisingly, given her TV credits, Muharrar has a keen eye for the absurd. Near the start of Julia’s mission in Britain, when she runs into a friend named Caroline (and her husband Tim, who's gone ahead with their child in a stroller), Muharrar writes:
Caroline placed a hand on my elbow. “Look, I know grief is hard.” So we’d entered the ladies-only portion of the conversation. No, Tim, come back, Tim. “My grandmother died three years ago. So believe me, I get it.”
“How old was she?”
“Ninety-seven, we knew it was coming, but it was still a shock.”
Ninety-seven. Twenty-nine. There were enough years in between those ages for two adult lives, both longer than Gabe’s.
“Julia.” Caroline paused dramatically. She looked me right in the eye, then unveiled her wisdom. “Grief comes in waves.”
Eye-rolling bromides aside, grief truly is the beating heart of “Loved One” – even though it’s narratively propelled by Julia’s plot to reclaim Gabe’s effects, and the secrets that she and Elizabeth reveal to each other along the way.
On a handful of occasions, the novel’s contrivances and coincidences strain credulity. But perhaps the biggest challenge Muharrar faces is the absence, from the start, of the man at the center of the novel's love triangle. As readers, we’re essentially guests at the funeral of someone we’ve never met, and part of Muharrar’s job is to make us also kind of fall in love with Gabe (a globetrotting rock star/songwriter who performs under the name Separate Bedrooms). The flashbacks we access don’t really achieve this, however, to the point that I often thought, “Ladies, I just don’t know if this dude is worth all the overseas travel and tsuris.”
And yet. The plot does move, as the search advances, and the two women, despite their discomfort with each other, ultimately join forces. Plus, I always appreciate when an author talks up to her audience, as Muharrar regularly does in “Loved One.” (Cheekily referencing “Pride & Prejudice,” Muharrar writes, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a heterosexual woman entering her thirties coming off two disappointing relationships and a series of casual flings will eventually consider every man she knows as a potential long-term partner.”)
This respect for her readers extends to the book’s last chapters, which wisely resist the rom-com pull to tie things up in a neat bow. Julia is, after all, a character struggling to make peace with the ambiguity that’s left in the wake of Gabe’s sudden death. It’s only fitting that we, like her, must learn to live among contradicting truths and unanswered questions.
So while Muharrar’s novel about love and grief has its flaws, her narrator's unique personal journey (and her witty voice) will keep you reading, and Muharrar gets some things exactly right – including this insightful passage about friendship:
Unlike in a romantic relationship, you could disappear for a few weeks, even months, without a check-in. You’d always pick up right where you left off. Knowing this, the problem was you could easily end up going too long without spending time in person. Since he’d moved, Gabe and I heard about each other’s lives, but we were no longer involved in them, no longer familiar with all the events and players or participating in the weekly ups and downs. Instead we had catch-up phone calls. They were a necessary evil: the conjugal visit of friendships, talking in the car on the way to or from somewhere, or while waiting in line, or during lunch break, cramming every recent detail into fifteen minutes or less of conversation. It was a perpetual update exchange as opposed to experiencing life together.
Who among us, with close friends who live far away, hasn't experienced this maddening mix of joy and sadness? In this moment, Muharrar made me feel seen – which is, of course, exactly the kind of profound loss Julia mourns while pursuing her strange scavenger hunt in England.
For she must, on some level, understand that as we age, it only gets harder to replace such witnesses to our lives. No matter how many personal items or answers Julia ends up finding, in the end, that's her real quest.
