They were twins, mirror images of each other, even down to their souls. But that statement, just like a mirror, is tricky, for they are mirror opposites, where Jane is left handed, her sister is right, where Eugenie is sloppy, Jane is perfectly ordered. Where Jane is alive, and an adult, Genie is dead. This ripping away of her other half has left Jane strangely empty. As an adult and writer of fanciful children's tales, she has not been able to confide her past to her lover and book illustrator, Simon. Although he draws her words to life with a perfection that she can hardly believe, she can not bring herself to even confess that her parents still live, that is, until a phone call from her father forces her to admit to it. She has to travel back to her childhood home to see her dying mother. This cuts her off from everyone...from her lover, who sees her as a stranger, from the parents she abandoned ages ago, from her local friends. In this very insular environment she lays it all bare for us in a sort of letter of explanation to Simon, and we meet Eugenie, her butterfly of a mother and wasp of a father. In a world where her father (who is at times violent, at times very loving) and her mother (a drifty and sweet woman who seeks to define herself through creativity, who hungers for a world of color) are distracted by the instability of their mairrage, Jane and Eugenie are each other's only anchor. And since Genie takes after her mother much more than our solemn Jane does, Jane becomes a little adult in many ways.
Tired of having her spirit and dreams crushed, their mother leaves her husband to go to Toronto. Eventually, she collects her daughters, bringing them into her bohemic world of paintings and thrift stores. Jane often feels pulled between her parents, who she loves dearly, and even as her sister embraces the new life, Jane longs for the sanity and order of the old one...and when the chance comes to return to it, she grabs it, a choice that has heart breaking consequences.
As Jane tells us her story, she adds in stories from one of her books. The stories of Siamese twins and girls with horns reflect the story back to us, in the strange world where girls can have skin of incredible dryness and a deep, relentless thirsts, Jane reiterates the basic themes of what she's saying, what's she's been trying to reveal to Simon all along. The only person who seems to understand is her mother, who sends her cards every time a book comes out, and who Jane cannot bring herself to communicate with.
The Perpetual Heart Break might also be a good title for this story. The contrasts between story and confession, beauty and ugliness, is brilliantly wrought, but there is no joy in this book, only hope that joy may someday come. Jane is a very straight line person. Even as a child, she frets over germs and dirt, longing for order. In one scene, when her father forgets to bring change for hotdog day, he tries to make up for it by bringing in a pair of oversized, condiment covered hotdogs. Jane is embarrassed by the stares of her classmates and heartbroken, guilty over the fact that it is obvious her father now thinks that he made a mistake and is guilty, and disappointed that the hotdogs aren't even the way they like them. It is scenes like this, vividly real, uncomfortable, sad, that really got me thinking as well as to characterize the people in it. I'd say to myself that the kids are nasty...their father made a great deal of effort, they should have played it up and at least made him happy...but how would I have reacted, in real life? So even as I disagree with the people's action in this book, I feel empathy, because these are small, dumb things that anyone can do, that anyone can regret.
As I sit and try and think of descriptive terms for this book, the word quiet keeps coming up. It is a very quiet story...even the yelling between her parents comes second hand and is deadened by walls and time. Draining is another...despite the quiet nature that so echoes its narrator, it is a very emotional book. The fabulist aspects of this book, such as a girl who trades her lovely laugh for luxurious cobweb hair, do not leaven the plot...I liked the stories a lot, and would have loved to seen them illustrated, but they are not happy stories. Finally, I think it's strong. The architecture of the book is well wrought, and the substance of it will stay will readers a long time.
The Perpetual Ending
Kristen den Hartog
