Americans in Space

A friend was lamenting recently that all books seem to be about death or depression (or both), but I'm beginning to think it has more to do with the books to which we gravitate than to some publishing conspiracy. Don't get me wrong, I think it's possible for writers to reach for the "easy" conflict of death (of child, of spouse, of a relationship) to craft a story, but if you take that all away, what's left? Humor? But, as they say, death is easy and humor is hard.

Which brings me to Americans in Space by Mary E. Mitchell. It's entirely my fault that I picked up a book about a woman trying to recover from the death of her husband so I can't complain about that aspect. I will also say that Mitchell doesn't milk this the way I've seen it done in other works of fiction. Kyle has been dead two years now and Kate and her children are trying to move on. Or rather, Kate is stuck where she is, her four year old son is wallowing in babyhood while her daughter, now a teen, is raging into an unpleasant future.

I like that this was less about the chaos of early grief and more about how to pull your life back together when you're ready. This is something that we all deal with to a certain degree, even without an unexpected death. Unfortunately, I didn't like Kate much. She wasn't assertive enough to be a high school guidance counselor of troubled teens. I was okay with her failures with her own children--heck that's practically a cliche, the crazy antics of the psychologist's children, for example--but her kids' behaviors were so outlandish that I found it hard to lay all the blame on the death of their father. I think this is perhaps what Mary Mitchell intended for us to see; that not everything in life is tied to a specific event. Kate eventually starts to take responsibility for who she is and how she faces life and I appreciate, too, that Mitchell doesn't exactly have a man swoop in and "save" Kate.

There is a man, though. I think we all dream that someone will put up with us and all of our flaws, but I think we also like to think that our flaws aren't that bad, so of course we'll find someone who'll love us (or find someone again, in Kate's case). It's a little painful to watch Kate flail about and do stupid things, like decide to leave her job, yank her kids out of school and drive to Texas to "heal" with her parents (whom she can barely stand). That made me a little squirmy and irritated at Kate for being so blind. It also made me wonder how the divorced father who had begun to pay her notice could stand it. That he sticks by her is every lonely woman's fantasy (he likes me, flaws and all!), but I'm not sure I could buy it.


This is a book that makes you feel pretty good about your own life and Mitchell does a decent job with some of her characters. I really enjoyed Marge, the perfect next door neighbor. I wish she lived beside me (even if she might or might not have an affair with my husband). The fact that Marge is carrying her own burden of sadness reminded me of what my same friend said: You have to let go of your own grief sometime because everyone at the grocery store is harboring something painful. If only, she said, we could walk around with signs that announced to the world our burden--widow, mother of a dead child, abuse victime...etc... Wouldn't that make it easier on everyone? Mitchell offers a counter to that when she shows that Kate, flaky and sometimes annoying, still manages to move beyond her pain and rejoin the world in a conscious way.



On a side note, I think Mary E. Mitchell looks just like a high school counselor--in a good way. The fact that she looks nothing like what I imagined her protagonist to look like says a lot about her ability to create a character and also, perhaps, a little about how unbelievable Kate is as a counselor.