The Age of Anxiety
Carolyn See's powerful new novel about a middle-aged widow explores life under the shadow of 9/11.

Reviewed by Chris Bohjalian
Sunday, May 21, 2006

THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER YOU

A Novel

By Carolyn See

Random House. 242 pp. $24.95

Among the most potent and poignant new novels to address post-9/11 America is Carolyn See's There Will Never Be Another You . It is potent because the sense of dread and unease that mark almost every moment in the book is palpable; it is poignant because See, who in previous books has proven eminently capable of skewering her characters when they misbehave, has such compassion for the largely villain-less ensemble that populates this tale. Moreover, for readers who savored the last novel she wrote before 9/11, The Handyman , it is particularly affecting to see the way anxiety has replaced anticipation for one writer.

There Will Never Be Another You is set in See's familiar milieu of southern California, in the largely privileged confines of Westwood and UCLA. The novel opens with a short prologue: 58-year-old Edith's second husband has just died after a long illness, and at 6 in the morning -- as she is cleaning up the Depends, the baby powder and the soiled sheets that marked her husband's last days -- the phone rings. It is her son, Phil, a dermatologist at the UCLA medical center, calling to tell her that she must turn on the television because the Twin Towers in Manhattan are on fire.

See then jumps to the main body of her story. It is nearly six years later, the spring of 2007, and the world has already become a much darker place -- even inside the usually happily oblivious haven of Westwood. Phil starts spotting dead cats. He sees the first one on the way to work and a second one outside a cafeteria window at the hospital. And then from his office window he sees a third, and this one is up in a tree. Within minutes a cherry picker arrives:

"The guy in the picker was dressed in white, in what looked like a HAZ-MAT outfit except it didn't have any lettering, and his face was covered with a clear plastic mask. He was using pincers about three feet long. He reached gingerly out to the branch, pinched the cat, brought it back in to the platform he was standing on, and -- Phil saw now -- dropped it onto a stack of what had to be maybe eighteen or twenty other cats."

Is this the beginning of a terrorist attack involving biological weapons? Or has an experiment at the medical center run horribly amok? See is too intelligent a novelist to give us a quick answer. All we know for sure is that a lot of monkeys seem to have disappeared, too, and Phil -- much to his chagrin -- is recruited onto a hospital response team that is going to be trained to confront a looming, awful but completely unknowable terrorist attack.

Yet despite the fears of an impending terrorist strike, life goes on, as does death -- from disease and old age and tragic but pedestrian accidents. And that dichotomy is what really interests See, and what makes her new novel such a remarkable achievement. Will Edith, now in her mid-sixties, find love again, or will she while away her days as a volunteer at the hospital information desk? Can Phil and his unhappy wife make peace? And what of their children, especially their deeply troubled sixth-grade boy?

Meanwhile, there is an equally compelling subplot involving young lovers Andrea Barclay and Danny Lee, students at UCLA, who spend a lot of time at the hospital themselves because Andrea's father needs a new kidney and Danny's uncle is dying. For all of these characters, the great questions of their lives would have been no different before 9/11; now, however, they must live with a specter not unlike the sort Americans endured as they learned to duck and cover beneath their desks and waited for the big one to fall in the 1950s.

While it may be too soon for some novelists to approach 9/11, it isn't for See. She seems to have been changed by the events, and There Will Never Be Another You offers a glimpse of how we, too, have been transformed. ·

Chris Bohjalian is the author of 10 novels, including "Midwives" and "Before You Know Kindness." His new novel, "The Double Bind," will be published next winter.