PEYTON AMBERG
Tama Janowitz
St. Martin's Press
Fiction
ISBN: 0312318448

Tama Janowitz burst onto the literary scene in the 1980s with the publication of her bestselling story collection SLAVES OF NEW YORK, which deftly chronicled the insecurities and eccentricities of a colorful menagerie of city dwelling singles. Her subsequent books have been similar send-ups of Manhattan life, but with PEYTON AMBERG, Janowitz charts a new course as she turns her acerbic eye on married life and its malcontents.

PEYTON AMBERG is the MADAME BOVARY of our time: a modern-day domestic drama of longing, regret, resentment, and dreams unfulfilled. Similar to the infamously restless Emma Bovary, the title character in this novel is a deeply unhappy woman who revolts against the confines of her married life and its middle-class trappings through a series of adulterous affairs. It is only through these illicit liaisons that she is able to feel alive, whole and in control of her destiny. Peyton is in perpetual pursuit of an elusive and fleeting happiness, convinced that each sexual encounter is going to be the key to her salvation --- the thing that will fill the void.

Born on the wrong side of the tracks into a dysfunctional family, she had learned early on that her beauty was her only ticket out of a life of poverty. Desperate to escape this dreary blue-collar destiny, Peyton married young to an ambitious but boorish dental student. While at first she couldn't believe her good fortune in securing a loving husband and comfortable middle class future, she quickly grows restless and disillusioned by the marriage that she thought would be her deliverance. Her new life as a middle-class housewife suddenly feels provincial, her new husband tiresome, and she is overcome with resentment and regret that she could have done better.

She returns to her job as a travel agent, which provides some respite from reality by giving her the opportunity to travel on junkets to exotic locales. Her corruption begins innocently enough on a solo trip to Brazil when her wallet is stolen and she is befriended and seduced by a rich and handsome older man. After returning home, the staidness of her life and marriage pales in comparison to the excitement of the affair, and thus, like a junkie craving the next high, Peyton embarks on a series of sordid liaisons in an effort to stave off her gnawing discontent.

While these dalliances allow her to briefly escape herself, each encounter leaves her emptier and more unfulfilled than before. A downward spiral of shame and degradation ensues until, in the end, she is left with nothing. Her youth and beauty have evaporated and she is rendered completely pathetic and devoid of humanity. Alone in a seamy Belgium hotel room, she realizes too late that what she had might not have been so bad after all.

While Peyton's dissatisfaction with her station in life and her desire for better is perhaps a universal human condition, we are unable to feel sympathy because of her remorseless and self-indulgent actions. Her unwillingness to accept and appreciate the realities of her life ensures that her moral corruption is inevitable. The theme of destiny vs. free will is continually played out in this novel. While Peyton makes choices that lead to her downfall, she is also a victim of circumstances. The constraints of her upbringing, including lack of money and education, gave her limited options from the beginning.

But whatever disadvantages she may have had, there is little to make one pity the numb, one-dimensionally drawn character of Peyton Amberg. Her vast disappointment with life and her feelings of futility and powerlessness are echoed by the novel's airless and nihilistic atmosphere wherein time seems to stand still. This effect is created in part by the unusual and disjointed narrative technique that tells the story from the future moving backwards, interspersing slices of Peyton's married life with vignettes of her liaisons. The story ends where it began, some twenty years into the future. While this is a powerful morality tale and work of social commentary with strong echoes of MADAME BOVARY, its relentlessly downbeat nihilism and lack of a redemptive outcome may ultimately turn off readers.

   --- Reviewed by Joni Rendon

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