Prosperous Friends

August 27, 2012
Ned and Isabel are married, but other than a college courtship that neither ever felt like ending, their relationship appears to be more of a habit than a romance. Isabel is sad a lot. Ned, a writer, appears to have tried his hardest to make things better, but as everyone, including the doomed couple, knows, âThere may be cures to loneliness but marriage is not one of them.â The emotional tug of war that Ned and Isabel find themselves fighting, though not necessarily always on opposite sides of the rope, drives this poignant novel. Schutt (Florida) creates a noteworthy texture with what she withholds. Little backstory is provided and what does contextualize Ned and Isabelâs relationship comes piecemeal, over time, pushing the reader toward a more active engagement of imagining all that isnât quite explained. The technique is effective, making for abrupt juxtapositions, vivid moments, and terse language, the sum of which feels fittingly reflective of the relationship itself. No one in the book seems quite sure why sometimes the bits and pieces of life and of love meld over time into one definable shape while others remain disparate and fractured. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman.

October 1, 2012
This third novel from Schutt (All Souls, 2008, etc.) is the desultory story of an unhappy marriage. Ned and Isabel met in graduate school at Columbia. Pretty Isabel was smitten by the equally pretty Ned. Even then, Isabel had migraines caused by "sloth, envy, anger, uncertainty." Both wanted to be writers; Ned had the ambition. After attending Ned's cancer-stricken mother in California, they married in Vegas. We first meet them in London a year later, living frugally off Ned's fellowship. Schutt is known for her elliptical style. What we gather through the ellipses about their sex life does not bode well: He's importunate, she's withholding. Isabel finds out she's pregnant and decides on an abortion; she wants a career before motherhood. Ned attaches them to a rich, obnoxious banker (Schutt fixes him with a beady eye), and they vacation in Rome on his dime. Back stateside, Ned reconnects with Phoebe, an old flame. She's newly married, but so what? Cheating is part of the fun. Isabel does it with Clive, an elderly, rich, married painter. Such a shame that the old boy is "practiced in taking advantage of the stunned or wounded." He invites her up to Maine for some modeling. Isabel brings the uninvited Ned; if he drops Phoebe, she'll stop servicing Clive. Her plan doesn't work, though she cries and cries at a B&B on the way. (Its ancient owners, who bookend the novel, have an old-school marriage, loving and loyal.) This is where the younger couple's marriage essentially ends, though the reader must piece together the details; this is surely one ellipsis too many. Perhaps tiring of mopey Isabel and vapid Ned, Schutt shifts attention to Clive. There's not much drama there either. This material does not do justice to Schutt's sharp-edged vision of contemporary mores.

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June 1, 2012

National Book Award finalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and two-time O. Henry award winner Schutt is a writer's writer whose elegant prose seems like chiseled diamond. Here, golden boy Ned Bourne and his wife, Isabel, seek fulfillment of their artistic promise but are less successful in managing their emotional and sexual lives until they meet older painter Clive Harris and his poet wife, Dinah. With a reading group guide; for discriminating folks.

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