Although it dates from 2017. I recently heard Katherine Heiny talking, and answering audience questions, about Standard Deviation on Radio 4’s The Book Programme on Radio 4 with Jim Naughtie. I was driving and, for some reason, I must have turned off my usual radio 3. Perhaps it was a Jazz programme and that doesn’t work for me.
Anyway I listened to her being witty and thoughtful about this portrait of a marriage, realised it was probably very funny and resolved to order it once I got home. And I’m glad I did because it certainly made me chuckle a lot but it’s also rueful, thoughtful and packed with insights. And, for the record, I don’t agree with the person who objected on Twitter to the inclusion of “yet another” American book. It’s a good book – who cares about the nationality of the author?
Graham and Audra have been married for twelve years and their son Matthew has Asperger’s syndrome. They live in Manhattan where they both have well paid jobs. It’s a third person narrative but presented entirely from Graham’s point of view.
He loves Audra but she’s complicated. She is flighty, unpredictable, talks incessantly and tangentially and has no inhibition brake so she frequently says outrageously inappropriate things. But it’s Graham’s mortified thoughts we hear. Just to complicate things, he has the hots for his ex-wife who’s very different. They start cooking suggestively elaborate meals together. Then disaster strikes.
Matthew, meanwhile, struggles to make friends so when he does there’s much courting of the parents in an attempt to nurture the bond between the boys. It’s usually an excruciating failure – like the set piece dinner party to which Audra invites a whole range of disfunctional people who don’t know each other, as we learn from Graham’s asides. One of them brings a gift which triggers food poisoning. Everything Audra does is crazily well meant but over-the-top – like making friends with the doorman and inviting him to live in their spare room.
Graham adores Matthew, although he’s rueful about him reaching independence until he’s 35 or so. When Matthew falls in love with origami it involves a club with three geekily obsessive adult men – another trial for the boy’s parents but they will do anything to secure calm for their son.
Yes, it’s as funny as I’d hoped but, as in all comedy, there are many serious undercurrents to provide ballast.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Book of Strange New Things by Michael Faber
