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Pardon me if I'm sentimental, when we say goodbye
Don't be angry, don't be angry with me, should I cry
When you're gone I will dream a little dream as years go by
Now an' then, there's a fool, a fool such as I
- Bob Dylan
The trick in writing a book like THE PLEASURE WAS MINE is not in making it sentimental. Anybody could have done that, if that was all there was to be done. The subject matter --- the winding down of a fifty-year love affair due to the ravages of Alzheimer's --- lends itself all too well to sentimentality, as it wanders down the perfumed pathways of remembrance, memory and regret, heading slowly but inevitably downhill.
So the trick is not to screen out sentimentality. It's not possible. When you have a character like Irene Marshbanks, former South Carolina Teacher of the Year who is losing her ability to use the language, piece by piece, it's impossible not to feel the loss. And it doesn't even take firsthand experience with the disease to feel the anguish as memories and the love tied to them fade. Add to that the untimely death of a young wife and the mourning of her husband and son, and you have a plot that has sentimentality included as part of the standard equipment.
The trick, then, is to have a way to iron out that sentimentality, to present the story in a smooth and even way, like paint on a flat surface. The way that the brilliant Tommy Hays accomplishes this is by having Prate Marshbanks tell the story. Prate Marshbanks is a housepainter, and proud of it. He's proud of his skills and the life he's built with Irene and his son, the famous landscape artist. When he dreams, he dreams of smooth surfaces ready for painting.
Prate has a talent for self-deprecation, and he's painfully aware of his shortcomings as a husband and father. He's old now, and cranky, and torn up inside by his wife's illness and the inadequacy of his response to it. He can't keep the aides from mistreating her, or be by her side as often as he'd like, or take care of himself. On top of that, he's saddled with his grandson for the summer, while his artist son takes a break in a mountain retreat.
Hays delicately balances the sentimentality of the old man --- thinking about the past and mourning the overdevelopment of the New South --- with the sentimentality of the grandson, who lets fish loose off of stringers and can't bear to eat meat. This is not your ordinary generational conflict, but a confluence --- the streams of grief merge, crashing into each other with surface turbulence and a powerful undertow.
THE PLEASURE WAS MINE is sentimental, and if that's problematic for some readers, they should pardon Tommy Hays anyway. Now and then, there is a fool such as I, but talented writers like him only come around every so often. THE PLEASURE WAS MINE is an experience to be savored, to share with those you love, and to remember.
--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds, who writes movie reviews at txreviews.com.
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