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10/16/02

An obtuse character develops a fuller understanding of life

SMN
The Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel.
Doubleday, 2002. $23.95 — 256 pp.


Whether in life or in books — and to me life and books are intertwined, with the former writing the latter and the latter helping guide the former — we occasionally meet personalities whom we dislike on our first encounter. As we come to know these people or characters, however, as they open themselves before us, or change themselves, or reveal their hearts, we may slowly find ourselves coming to admire them, enjoy them, perhaps even love them.

Such is the case with Langston Braverman, one of the principal characters in Haven Kimmel’s new novel The Solace Of Leaving Early.

Langston first strikes the reader as arrogant, conceited, and silly. She has abandoned her graduate studies, has returned home to the small Indiana town of Haddington to live with her parents, has nothing but contempt for the people living in the town, and has even refused to attend the funeral of her childhood friend, Alice, whom she mistakenly believes has died of cancer.

Amos Townsend, a minister who lives within a short walk of Langston’s home, struggles with his own place in the town as he agonizes over Alice’s murder and his own possible responsibility for her death. He finds some solace in helping Alice’s two young daughters who have survived their mother’s shooting, which they also witnessed. In the wake of the murder, the girls have renamed themselves Epiphany and Immaculata, and they claim to speak with the Virgin Mary in their grandmother’s backyard.

Langston’s own mother forces her to become a teacher and a babysitter for the girls. As we watch Langston engage the two sisters, we see her changing from a haughty English Ph.D. candidate to a person who has at last begun to find her own way back into life. Even from her first encounter, Langston strikes the right note with the two grieving siblings. Here Langston asks what she should call the girls:


Madeline pointed to herself first. “I’ve been given the name Immaculata, and this is Epiphany.”

Langston sat back, surprised. “Oh dear. How ever Latin and archaic and liturgical. And also metaphorical. I too have a strange name.”

“Langston, is that right?” Epiphany asked, looking down. She seemed embarrassed to have spoken.

“Yes. And don’t ask me who I was named after; I’ve never actually asked my mother for fear she would say it was the poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes.”

The girls were silent.

“Perhaps you’re wondering why I would find that objectionable. Langston Hughes was a brilliant poet, one of the great lights of the American canon. And naming a little white baby girl after him would constitute the worst kind of co-opting of his eminence, no different than if she’d named me Duke Ellington. Tomorrow I’ll bring some of Hughes’s poems to read to you.”


As we discover in reading The Solace Of Leaving Early, Langston is not named for the poet, but she and her family do have secrets, events in their lives that have led Langston to feel so separated from other people when the novel begins. Amos Townsend, who also feels more and more separated from those he has come to shepherd, begins in this wonderful novel to examine his own life as well. Through the two girls, Langston and Amos are brought to a fuller understanding of life’s beauty and mystery.

What is particularly fine about this novel, other than the well-told story and the excellent writing, is its portrayal of the intellectual and spiritual life of two adults. There are ruminations on various philosophers and poets — Whitehead, Donne, and Kierkegaard are among those mentioned — that lead the reader to think about his own life and his own way of seeing that life. Haven Kimmel is not afraid, for example, to let Amos ruminate on “The Primordial and Consequent Natures of God” or to allow Langston to attack the various schools of thought in academia without having to explain each one in detail to the reader. Kimmel assumes that adults are reading her book and so creates characters who behave like adults, though Langston, who has spent her life in school, is admittedly only on the cusp of adulthood.

Readers who are looking for a book that not only entertains but is also filled with wisdom and beauty need look no farther than Haven Kimmel’s The Solace Of Leaving Early.

(Jeff Minick lives in Waynesville. He can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com).