From the knowing grandmother
in the novel “Tending to Virginia” to the failing mother stressing out her
daughter in the short story “Going Away Shoes,” elderly characters have always
played their parts in Jill McCorkle’s small-town, intergenerational fiction.
But the “manly voice” with “pipes and whistles in his sound,” as Shakespeare
put it, reverberates in its own distinctive fashion in the retirement home
setting of McCorkle’s new novel, where the yoga class finds “a whole roomful of
old folks breathing deeply and chanting — one sounding like a sewing machine
and another a squirrel.”
In its quiet way, “Life After Life,” McCorkle’s sixth
novel, is a daring venture — an attempt to tell a big story inside a tiny
orbit. At the Pine Haven retirement center in the author’s familiar, fictional
Fulton, N.C., dinner is finished early, which is fine with sunny Sadie, “who
likes to watch ‘Jeopardy’ in her pajamas.” Other occupants are less delighted
with the place: crusty Toby, a retired schoolteacher, repairs to her room,
“haunted by little past moments,” and Rachel, once a lawyer up North, sniffs at
Southern manners and sweet tea, succumbing to “a wave of time sickness” for her
former life.
The prospect of spending hours among these people might
seem tedious to a reader not having to bunk at Pine Haven himself (“Who in the
hell wants dinner at 5:30?” as feisty Rachel complains), but McCorkle is a poet
of the everyday. The 26-year-old house beautician, C. J., asks residents, “Does
that feel good?” while rubbing lotion into their “old worn-out feet. Some call
them Pat and Mike. Some call them the old dogs. One calls them her little
tootsies.”
McCorkle has an ear for Southern banter, both funny and
sad. Stanley, another retired lawyer, “often sees the arrival of the funeral
home car over at nursing. They try to be discreet but how impossible is that?”
Although his theatrically feigned dementia seems an overworked story line, he’s
nevertheless comic in his outbursts. “Here I am, big Billygoat Gruff ready for
some action,” he proclaims in the dining hall, scandalizing the ladies.
McCorkle wisely seeks out connection, gnarled hands
reaching for others as the clock ticks down. As if trying to supply more oxygen
for her narrative, she expands Pine Haven society to include the family that
lives next door, most engagingly 12-year-old Abby, who treats the residents
like surrogate grandparents. Less successfully drawn is Abby’s mother, restless
in her marriage and, like the beautician and a hospice volunteer named Joanna,
looking for love in all the wrong places.
The back stories for these women tend to divert the
reader’s focus from the main action at Pine Haven. And the good-hearted
Joanna, who composes mini-biographies for recently deceased residents, has a
suspiciously polished literary style for a woman who spends most of her time
running a hot dog emporium.
Clearly, McCorkle is after more than final dramas. The
novel’s title hints at resurrection, but don’t mistake “Life After Life” for a
peek at heaven in the classic sense. For each character reaching Shakespeare’s
seventh age, “sans everything,” McCorkle offers a heightened,
stream-of-consciousness journey, punctuated with a last glance backward. But
the real successes in this novel are found in simple, often luminous moments
this side of the great divide — when, for example, Stanley puts Herb Alpert’s
“Taste of Honey” on his antique stereo, welcoming Rachel into his arms. “We can
dance to this one,” she says. “We can pretend it’s 1965.”
Roy Hoffman is the author of an
essay collection, “Alabama Afternoons,” and a forthcoming novel, “Come
Landfall.”
