The Long Accomplishment

March 11, 2019
Novelist Moody’s touching memoir painstakingly recounts a year in his life that overflowed with tragedies. Starting in October 2013, after Moody (The Ice Storm) married his second wife, Laurel, they endured several setbacks, the most difficult of which was Laurel’s inability to carry a child to term. In heart-wrenching detail, Moody describes the miscarriages (“Neither one of the fetuses has a heartbeat,” one doctor informs them at an ultrasound appointment). Throughout, Moody weaves in other tales of hardship that sometimes slow the narrative, such as the deaths of several friends, and a toxic smell that forces Moody and Laurel to leave their Brooklyn apartment. Meanwhile, Laurel, an artist, faces her mother’s rapidly declining health, and Moody copes with his stepfather’s senility. “Total up some of the hardships,” Moody writes, “and ask yourself how we could possibly continue. We were two people who had been married less than a year... but we felt more like a traumatized couple, battered, and worn, and bruised.” Just as they felt that things couldn’t get worse, Moody and Laurel come home to find their house broken into and robbed; the resulting insurance payout, however, affords them the chance to try one last IVF cycle. Despite the digressions, this is a revealing, intimate memoir—and a moving love letter from Moody to his wife.

May 15, 2019
The acclaimed writer reflects on the hardships he and his second wife endured during their first year of marriage. Readers familiar with Moody's (Hotels of North America, 2015, etc.) fiction, especially The Ice Storm, will be drawn to this memoir about the complicated arenas of love and marriage. The opening lines are attention grabbing: "In order to have a second marriage you can believe in you may have to fail at your first marriage. I failed spectacularly at mine." He goes on to vividly recount the events that triggered his "spectacular failure," specifically his extramarital relationships, which led to divorce. By the time he met visual artist Laurel Nakadate, the author was approaching his 50s. Having shared some of his past emotional baggage, he assures readers that he is ready to pursue a fully committed relationship, and his month-by-month narrative initially seems to prove his conviction. Moody has a seasoned eye for capturing intriguing details and nuance in a variety of settings, and he brilliantly highlights the competitively hip Park Slope, Brooklyn, arts scene. Yet his story is rambling and often digressive, and as a document of his marriage, it feels surprisingly self-absorbed. Moody writes affectionately of his new wife and continually praises her talent, but he fails to bring Laurel into focus as a fully fleshed-out individual. Her suffering is tangible, primarily in her efforts to make it through a full-term pregnancy, but her presence is peripheral to the deeper internal struggle the author experiences. Dying parents and friends, infertility issues, and a household robbery are among the events they faced in their first year together. "Total up some of the hardships, reader, and ask yourself how we could possibly continue," writes Moody. All of these are difficult challenges but ones that are not uncommon (other than the robbery) for someone in their 50s. The author ends on a positive note as the couple seems to have achieved a longed-for contentment. An intermittently insightful but narrowly focused examination of a marriage that will mostly interest devoted Moody fans.

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June 1, 2019
Acclaimed novelist Moody (Hotels of North America, 2015) documents in unflinching, diary style the tumultuous first year of his second marriage. Marked by tragedies, including the death of his sister, the suicide of a friend, two miscarriages, a home burglary, and the declining health of elderly family members, the year seemed to be cursed. Indeed, Moody traces his acquisition of a signed Charles Manson postcard as an omen portending ill fortune. The central thread of the narrative is made up of the new couple's desire to have a child, unsuccessful fertility treatments, and the sorrow that follows. Moody balances this emotional adversity with poignant digressions regarding his involvement with a theatrical entity that designs productions for an audience of one and his shrewd yet entertaining observations of his Brooklyn neighbors. Moody's sheer delight with language and his clever turns of phrase hint at a sense of wonder and hope, while his Knausgaardian introspection leaves him contemplating the intersection of fate and magic, recognizing that good fortune seems preordained while transcending tragedy requires something magical, namely, the power of love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)