Alan, an architectural historian, is currently a faculty fellow of the Center for Humanities at Corinth university, of which Jane is the administrative director. Corinth is of course an old stamping ground of Lurie’s; we first knew it in The War between the Tates, in the 1970s, and indeed characters from then make passing appearances here. But this is the fall of 2001; campus concerns have moved on. That said, this is not a campus novel; it is a brief private skirmish, a tale of two couples, but cunningly embedded. The Center is marvellously evoked: its implacable mores, its shifting cast of temporary fellows, the interfering widow of its benefactor. This is archetypal academia, but with the added twist of one distinctly unacademic figure.
Delia Delaney is famous and beautiful, the author of highly regarded fantasy tales, an American Angela Carter. She erupts into the Center, the star fellow of the year, and soon has everyone beguiled by her southern charm, her golden locks, her floaty dresses. She suffers from crippling migraines; her amiable, handsome husband Henry serves as her general factotum.
Alison Lurie has always been extraordinarily skilful at whipping from one viewpoint to another. One thinks of Only Children, with its compelling kaleidoscopic narrative. In Truth and Consequences just Jane and Alan alternate, but with always that ironic authorial tone behind their version of what is going on. This makes for a dismayingly truthful account of the effect on a marriage of debilitating illness; both have lost sight of the people they once were and the relationship they once had. It needs only the intrusion of external factors, in the form, of course, of Delia and her husband, to precipitate a crisis.
Some 30 pages or so before the end of this brief novel I was wondering how on earth Lurie was going to tie things up, and had a few ideas, none of which turned out to be right. The outcome always hangs perilously in the balance, along with a certain teasing ambiguity about personalities. Delia is irresistible and seductive, but it becomes evident that she is sexually squeamish (which suits Alan well enough, who has his own problems in that department); furthermore, cracks appear in the façade — she is not as young as she would have people think, she is innately insecure. Long-suffering Jane, who has always wanted to be ‘a good person’, displays an unexpected capacity for action.
Alison Lurie will celebrate her 80th birthday next year. Truth and Consequences is her first novel for six years, and hugely to be welcomed. All the Lurie trademarks are there — the stylistic economy that enables her to set a scene or establish a character in a few telling lines, the busy story that keeps the reader rushing ahead, the revealing dialogue. This novel is perhaps slighter than its predecessors. But it is equally mordant and entertaining, and wonderfully expansive about a time, a place, and the corrosive effect of selfishness.
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