OPINION:
VERY NICE
Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95, 304 pages
Around about page 250 of Marcy Dermansky’s “Very Nice,” the reader begins to wonder about how this is all going to end.
The novel has less than 40 more pages to run and there is a lot going on, much of it seemingly unresolvable. This is because it’s structured like a farce with situations — mostly bedroomy — piling up like storm clouds.
It begins simply enough with Rachel Klein kissing her creative writing professor Zahid Azzam, and then seducing him. Zahid thinks this is very nice, but as he later notes, “She had been slow, careful, deliberate. Nothing about our experience had been tacky or crude. It was erotic. It was tender. It had been mutually satisfying. That was all it was ever going to be.”
This is a little disingenuous. Rachel had hopes of it being much more, especially after Zahid ends up spending summer in her very nice Connecticut home with her mother, Becca, and his standard poodle. Becca adores the dog because hers has just died. Soon she also adores Zahid and they have a tumultuous affair. For obvious reasons they hide this from Rachel, and equally obviously she begins to suspect.
It would be easy enough for the novelist to bring this tale a conclusion but Marcy Dermansky’s plot is ever expanding. The reason Zahid has to stay with the Kleins is that he has sublet his apartment to Khloe, who, it turns out, works for Becca’s banker husband, Jonathan. He has recently left Becca for Mandy, a cute airline pilot. She gives him herpes, which is exactly what Rachel had fantasized for him in one of her stories.
Khloe, meanwhile, is lusting after Jane, who is in love with someone else. Coincidentally, Jane is Zahid’s editor. He had won prizes and acclaim for his first novel, but is late on his second book so she is on his case.
Meanwhile, he has been offered a prestigious teaching slot in Iowa. Good news. Readers could think that here is the ending in sight, taking the form of a sad but necessary parting. But Zahid won’t leave Becca.
There’s more. Despite — or because of — its wealth and charm, Rachel’s very nice home town is also home to the Thorntons. Their son, Theo, had arrived in Becca’s classroom with a gun. Becca talked him down. She seriously dislikes the Thorntons as “bad rich people and we were the good ones.” She’s not best pleased when Rachel gets involved with their other son.
So here we have a triangle of Zahid and Becca and Rachel; another of Becca and her husband and Mandy; another of Khloe and Jane and Jane’s lover; another of Zahid, Khloe and Jane. Then there are the Thorntons and Khloe’s sister, Kristi, playing supporting roles. Any slight vibration, any change in configuration could topple these triangles.
So, what is a talented writer like Marcy Dermansky to do? It’s a hard question because by the time readers are asking it, they have gotten involved in the emotional lives of the characters. Five of them take turns telling their stories, so we see pretty Rachel, rather earnest, rather childish for her 19 years, struggling with scary questions about Zahid and then her mother. Zahid is 36 and he, too, is rather young for his years. A nice guy, though. Becca looks a lot younger than her 54 years, and behaves beautifully — until she doesn’t. But then, who can blame her taking consolation in Zahid and his lovely poodle after her husband abandons her? Then there is Khloe, knowing exactly what she wants, and not getting it.
The jacket bills this as “a brilliantly funny novel.” It certainly has its funny moments. Like a stage farce, its characters’ shenanigans initially keep the audience laughing at a distance. Belatedly, though, some characters turn out to be real people with real pain. So, when nearing the end, readers begin to wonder what is in store for the personnel of “Very Nice,” they have good reason to feel some concern for their favorite character — even though all of them have been behaving badly one way or another.
In a stage farce these problems are often solved by having some characters marry and letting the others slink away. Suffice it to say that Ms. Dermansky doesn’t take these options. Her conclusion is a shock. Not a thrilling or surprising shock. It’s a shocking one. It’s not especially believable considering the character who engineers it, and seriously misjudged in a novel that otherwise has all the elements of a deftly told summer page turner.
• Claire Hopley is a writer and editor in Amherst, Mass.
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