"Emily, Alone"

Who can resist a novel that begins with the following epigraph from Virginia Woolf (from “To the Lighthouse”): “Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life -- startling, unexpected, unknown?”? Not I, certainly. Actually, I chose to read this book, “Emily, Alone” (Viking, 2011), even before seeing this wonderful epigraph, when I heard the author, Stewart O’Nan, interviewed on the radio. I love the idea that the book is about an older woman, and that the author’s goal was to truly portray the texture and details of the day-to-day life of this woman. And he does so in a manner both realistic and engaging. Often writers writing about older people write condescendingly, but O'Nan does not. A person of a different age (fifty) and gender (male), O’Nan reminds us that literature springs from the imagination, and writers are not only capable of writing about those like themselves in the obvious forms of identity. Actually, this is not so much a book about an older woman as a book about an interesting and interested woman who happens to be aging, and figuring out what this phase of her life will be like. What is impressive is that she doesn’t allow herself to accept a smaller world, now that her husband has died and her grown children live far away. She enjoys the small pleasures of living alone and having fewer responsibilities, but she also rises to the challenge when her sister-in-law becomes ill, beginning to drive again (something that she had given up) and staying involved in the larger world. Nothing very dramatic happens in this novel, but there is great reading pleasure to be had in observing and savoring the events in Emily’s current life, what she thinks about them, and how she responds to them. I loved reading this novel, and the character of Emily will stay in my mind for a long time. Highly recommended.