Book World: ‘Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving’ is a journey back to life
But Ben doesn’t focus on the latex gloves and plastic vessels, and soon neither do we. He’s caught up in the larger problem of being: How will he live in the shadow of his own unspeakable loss and move beyond “the bitter spoils of self-pity”? And how will he encourage a young man whose short future stretches toward the horrors of a degenerative disease?
Fortunately, Evison isn’t willing to cheat on these problems: Trev isn’t cured by the end; unlike Job, Ben doesn’t get a new, better family. But the novel does resort to a road trip that rolls the story in the direction of an indie-film cliche. And there are madcap chases and buffoonish arguments that seem to have waddled in wearing clown shoes from a much cornier novel. Although the winding trek to Salt Lake City in an old van gives the story some changing scenery and quirky new characters (Ellen Page, call your agent), it obscures the gently handled relationship that Ben and Trev had established in his home.
(Algonquin) - “The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving” by Jonathan Evison.
(Keith Brofsky/Algonquin) - Author Jonathan Evison.
Still, this is a far more focused plot than Evison presented in his previous novel, “West of Here,” an entertaining but hysterically overpopulated story about the development of Washington’s Pacific coast. Here, the cast is manageable and dominated by desperate men who have “made a hopeless mess out of fatherhood.” They’ve all failed their children in disastrous ways, none more so than Ben. As he and Trev and their growing ragbag of passengers drive around the Northwest, we get flashbacks to Ben’s life with his son and daughter, “the blessed disorder” of parenting with all the dirt and sugar and sweat that involves. Overshadowed by their deaths, these quirky scenes have an even more wrenching charm. For many chapters we don’t know exactly what happened to his kids, but Ben keeps torturing himself with recriminations. The outlines of that unspeakable moment grow sharper and sharper until the brief description toward the end is so fraught with dread and agony that it’s difficult to read.
There’s a risk, of course, in trying to situate an event of such tragic magnitude in a novel that includes scenes of broad comedy and snarky wit. Anne Tyler kept her emotional range far more controlled in “The Accidental Tourist,” a masterpiece of parental grief that makes “The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving” look like a jalopy in comparison. But Evison has such scruffy charm that, as his story bounces along, it’s easy to forgive him the rough spots.
Charles is The Washington Post’s fiction editor. Find him on Twitter: @RonCharles.
These books offer keen insights into leadership and management challenges, which on a day-to-day basis can bring their own dramas, twisting plot lines and, in this city, political intrigue.
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