"Some Bright Nowhere"
By Ann Packer
Harper
Ann Packer’s latest novel, “Some Bright Nowhere,” is narrated by a retired man, Eliot, who’s taking care of his beloved, terminally ill wife, Claire, when she suddenly requests that he move out so her longtime best friends can take over.
Though hurt, angry, and shocked by this request, Eliot nonetheless agrees to go. But awkwardness abounds – like running into a neighbor at the grocery store who’d “told him more than once that he was doing an amazing job, prompting Claire to say later that no one would have complimented a wife in the same way. A wife was expected to be a caretaker. For a husband, doing the work was the same as being amazing at it. … Had Eliot been good at it, though? … Maybe he’d been adequate. Merely adequate. Was that the real reason Claire wanted Holly and Michelle?”
Eliot feels not just adrift, staying in Holly’s guest room while in exile, but worried, too, feeling like he’s the only one who knows everything that Claire’s been through, including her pain points, medications, what she needs, and what she must avoid. “Her original diagnosis leveled him, he could say that now – leveled him and exposed how essentially ill-equipped he was. One night, sick beyond bearing with poison, she fell apart, cried that he didn’t love her. … From the floor, she said, ‘How can you love me and stand by while I’m going through hell?’ And he said (stupidly, so stupidly): ‘What choice do I have? Would you rather I not stand by?’ Later there had been periods of great closeness. Physical closeness, reaching for the other in bed, at the kitchen table, in the car. But emotional too. Probably the closest communion of their marriage.”
As caregivers know, the role comes with lots of these hard, painful, meaningful moments, but Eliot lovingly stays by Claire’s side throughout. So why, as the end draws near, does Claire want what she wants?
Eliot can’t fathom. But once he leaves, he reflects on things he couldn’t possibly consider while consumed with caring for Claire: his relationships with his grown children; his monthly dinner club of male acquaintances who could become friends, if he let them; and earlier years, when he juggled his career with fatherhood and marriage: “At first (Claire) was gentle about his parents’ foibles, but once the kids arrived she pressed him harder: She loved his father, but Eliot had to admit the old man was a sexist hard ass! Eliot had to agree with her – didn’t he? – that being mindful about parenting was better than just automatically doing what your parents did! The thing was, saying someone had to agree with you was rhetorical; it was an attempt at persuasion. … It was actually, as a conversational gambit, even a little bullying. … Eliot was pierced by the notion that for his entire married life he had pretended to agree when actually what he did, what he always did, was concede.”
“Some Bright Nowhere,” as you might guess, is generally a quiet, slow walk of a book. It gets a lot about the complications of caregiving exactly right. Eliot’s insecurities amp up his jealousy while he’s exiled, which makes the trio of women all the more secretive in their conversations and plans, so that soon, all four are caught in a loop that can only be disrupted by an act of emotional combustion.
Packer earns this moment, especially as Eliot feels frustrated by the hospice’s constantly changing estimates of how long Claire will likely live (or suffer, depending on the day), and by Claire’s shifting attitudes toward the husband she still loves.
But even with this showdown and its aftermath, I couldn’t get past the idea that the whole novel, like Eliot, seemed far too muted and polite for its own good. Packer tells her story competently. Her characters are fairly well developed. But there’s little to no spark or sense of momentum. (The reader often feels as listless as our bewildered, displaced narrator.) The story’s endpoint is a foregone conclusion – Claire will die, and Eliot will become a widower – so it’s all about getting us to invest in how these two arrive there.
Packer is partly successful in this aim, but ultimately, “Some Bright Nowhere” is a book I appreciated more than I loved.
