Seek The Living by Ashley Warlick.
Houghton Mifflin Co., 2005. $24 — 256 pp.

Some novels, as we read them, may take on the claustrophobic feeling of a family gathering, that time, usually three to four days into the visit, when even the most gallant among us begin to wish that we were somewhere else, anywhere else rather than in the itchy, smothering clutches of our beloved families. There is too much jabbering, too many connections, too many bonds and obligations. Like a dog in the late fall, when the cool air carries the scent of a dozen different outside critters and callings, we begin to eye the door, making imagined excuses for a clean getaway.

Such was my reaction on reading Ashley Warlick’s Seek The Living. Warlick, who lives with her family in South Carolina and teaches creative writing at Queen’s College in Charlotte, sets her novel of family bonds, marital struggles, and friendship in South Carolina’s upstate. Joan Patee stands at the center of the novel and its many conflicts, some of which she has a hand in creating, nearly all of which involve her at some level or another. Joan, for example, tries to help her brother Denny, who has just received a beating, presumably for carrying on with one of the women of the town in which he lives. Denny is also living with one of his father’s former students, Hedy, whom Joan befriends. Hedy is soon carrying Denny’s child, another connection between these characters, for Joan wishes that she was pregnant by her husband, Marshall. Joan’s father, like her brother, also requires a certain amount of caretaking; his beloved wife, Joan’s mother, is dead, and he seems constantly in trouble in his position as a university professor, engaging in different forms of blackmail and reprisals against the administration.

Joan’s neighbor, Gail, has recently lost her husband to a strange illness — if it was an illness — in Mexico, and we eventually learn that Joan had slept with Gail’s husband, Bannon, before they were married. Both Gail and Joan are upset when Bannon’s sisters and children pay a visit to help settle portions of the estate as well as bring closure to their brother’s death. Marshall, with whom Joan is trying to conceive, also has left a few unmade beds in his own past, though we don’t learn about these until late in the book.

Seek The Living is primarily a novel about secrets, a theme that is underlined by Denny’s discovery of a hidden grave or graves — he is the caretaker of the town’s graveyard — and the tale of an old murder that arises from that grave. Marshall’s job also underpins this theme: he is a seeker after the secrets of the dead, though a professional one, an insurance claims adjustor who roams the country investigating major disasters ranging from vicious storms to terrorist attacks. Nearly every character in the book pulls up secrets from the past, with Joan serving as the main conduit through which these secrets pass.

Warlick’s style helps increase this feeling of closeness to her characters. She writes in the present tense, which of course adds immediacy to her narrative, and she also writes close to the ground, speaking nearly always from the immediate concerns of her characters. Few of her people philosophize about much of anything — politics, God, life itself; they converse and act instead strictly within the confines of their own lives, surrounding us with their sorrows and their problems without the relief of distance or objectivity. At times they seem strangely removed from the wider world outside themselves. Here is Joan’s description of a Christmas visit to church:

In the den, he’s watching television. I climb over the back of the chair, tuck my feet under his thigh. I say, “So what are we today, Baptists?”

He smiles. “Episcopalians.”

“Oh, good. I have always liked to kneel.”

The claustrophobic atmosphere of the novel actually affects the behavior of several of the characters. Joan expresses the feeling several times that she must escape a particular situation or that she is having trouble breathing. At a party, Hedy passes out, overcome by sickness when one of the characters cuts up a fish. At the same party, ridden with guilt about an act of betrayal, Marshall has difficulty catching his breath.

This scene with Marshall, like others in the book, may confuse us. Warlick seems to hold information from us; we have to search the pages, for example, to determine whether Marshall has simply drunk himself into unconsciousness or has been given drugs by Lewis to help him with his sudden panic attack. Joan seems strangely uninvolved here; she confronts Lewis about his previous dealings with Bannon, but never asks him what drugs he may have given to her husband. It is a bizarre scene which ends with Joan driving her now unconscious husband home without having a clue as to what’s wrong with him.

Warlick’s style and characters won’t appeal to everybody. Readers coming to this book need to be willing to explore with patience the story and the characters.. Such exploration does nevertheless offer some rewards. For readers looking for a strong female character who is not some sort of superwoman or for anyone wanting to read a novelist who isn’t afraid to be a little different, Seek The Living may be just the treasure they’ve been seeking.

(Jeff Minick is a writer and teacher who lives in Waynesville. He may be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com.)