John Lang
In “Swan Song,” Lisa Alther’s first novel in nearly a decade, the author utilizes one of literature’s — and religion’s — principal motifs, that of the journey/pilgrimage. While the book’s first chapter and final few pages are set in Vermont, most of its events occur aboard a cruise ship that travels from Hong Kong through the Suez Canal to New York, with assorted stops and many misadventures along the way. The novel’s protagonist, Dr. Jessie Drake, is a thoughtful, admirable, though often conflicted, character whose company readers will welcome on this journey. Moreover, Alther skillfully creates an array of striking and distinctive, occasionally grotesque, secondary characters, like Mrs. Pendragon, who lives aboard the ship year round and sews what she calls “angel gowns . . . for aborted fetuses and stillborn babies.” Or like the licentious Gail Savage, who is unhappily married to a much older, impotent husband and who thus engages, almost compulsively, in numerous shipboard liaisons.
When readers first encounter Jessie in chapter one, she is working as an emergency room physician subjected to the myriad daily traumas of that profession. More importantly, during the past two years Jessie has lost not only her parents but also her partner of 20 years, Kat Justice, a novelist, poet and journalist who has died of esophageal cancer. After the body of a young woman washes up in front of the condo on Lake Champlain that Jessie had shared with Kat, Jessie eagerly accepts a position as one of the doctors aboard the Amphitrite. As the title of chapter one reveals, Jessie believes that she has become a “death magnet.”
As the book’s title and its epigraph likewise suggest, death is one of Alther’s central themes. Jessie is in her mid-60s, and Kat’s death has reminded her of her own mortality. But love, in all its varieties, is an equally prominent theme, for Jessie finds herself attracted to Mona, a singer performing on board the ship, and begins to waver between fidelity to Kat and her interest in Mona, who indicates the attraction is mutual. “Swan Song” explores the topics of misogyny, sexual orientation and homophobia both through characters like Jessie and Kat and Mona and through allusions to authors like Constantine Cavafy, E. M. Forster, Vita Sackville-West and Marguerite Yourcenar. At one point Jessie reads in Kat’s journals an entry that asks, “How do you write honestly about gay experience without destroying your chances of being published and reviewed by mainstream presses? Is it possible?” This novel is, at least in part, Alther’s engaging, provocative response to these questions.
Other important themes are also raised in “Swan Song.” In keeping with her surname, Kat has heightened Jessie’s political consciousness, including matters of economic justice, environmental destruction (Jessie refers to “this tortured planet”), and the pervasiveness of war throughout human history. In fact, references to war and the suffering they cause are almost ubiquitous as the novel unfolds. By depicting the elaborate entertainments available to passengers on the Amphitrite —such escapist diversions as the Arabian Nights Gala, the Flappers Ball, and the Pirates’ Tea Dance — Alther underscores the mindless hedonism that views “life as a Mardi Gras.”
Despite the gravity of many of the themes “Swan Song” addresses, Alther infuses the book with delightful comic elements, beginning with the novel’s opening sentence: “It was snowing the afternoon Jessie recycled her sex toys.” About the wanton Gail’s erotic dancing Alther writes, “She was like an octopus with rhythm.” Gail’s sexual antics with Rusty in a chapter titled “Reverse Cowgirl” are best left to the reader’s imagination, but they leave Rusty seriously impaired. Another philandering character finds himself the target of both Jessie’s and Mona’s ire when he sent the two women the identical love poem, telling each separately, “I wrote you a poem last night,” one Mona recognizes he has plagiarized.
Texts employing the journey motif usually reveal the discoveries their protagonists make during their travels, the new insights they acquire. “Swan Song” is no exception. But I leave it to readers of this review to trace for themselves Jessie’s altered perspectives on love and death and her relationship with Mona. Be assured that Lisa Alther is an entertaining, yet challenging guide on this well-crafted voyage of self-transformation and yearned-for societal change.
John Lang taught American literature at Emory & Henry College from 1983 until his retirement in 2012.He has authored books on Fred Chappell, Ron Rash and six major poets from our region, including Robert Morgan, Kathryn Stripling Byer and Charles Wright.
READ ON: Lisa Alther wins award.
