Novel tackles loneliness with humour
The light from Laura Zigman’s new novel, Separation Anxiety, is generated by a kind of literary nuclear fusion: an intense compression of grief and humour. The combination of those elements usually produces cynical black comedy, something witty and bitter, but Zigman’s work is too tender for that.
Separation Anxiety is a comeback for this writer who hasn’t published a novel since Piece of Work more than a decade ago. A series of personal tragedies including the deaths of her parents and her own cancer diagnosis, swept Zigman into what she calls “so many dormant years.” But now, she’s transmuted those struggles into a new book — a “second chance” — about a once-successful author whose world is collapsing under the weight of disappointment.
When we meet the narrator, Judy Vogel, she’s been deflated by a steady leakage of optimism. Years earlier, she had published a classic children’s book that became a PBS series — a thrilling, lucrative success that led to nothing else. At 50, she’s mourning the loss of her parents, nursing her best friend through a deadly illness and longing for the happy rapport she once enjoyed with her son, who has drifted into “brutal teenage opacity.”
What’s worse, Judy is trapped in a zombie marriage. It’s over between her and her husband, but he can’t afford to live anywhere else, so he’s sleeping in the guest room, and they’re pretending everything is fine.
Everything is not fine.
“Life eventually takes away everyone and everything we love and leaves us bereft,” Judy says at her lowest point. Clutching a copy of Marie Kondo’s bestselling decluttering book, she goes down to the basement in a last-ditch effort to find sparks of joy. “So little gives me joy now that I’m afraid I’ll get rid of every single thing I’ve ever owned and end up with nothing,” she admits. “Feeling empty only makes me want to be emptier.”
In these opening pages, Zigman digs into the self-confirming nature of depression with the authenticity of someone who’s been hounded by that black dog. But the sorrow here is always twined with comedy. Amid all the basement junk, Judy finds an eco-friendly baby sling that she never used. Impelled by longing, she puts it on. “I feel like Björk at the Oscars wearing that swan,” she says, but something’s missing. She tries filling the sling with bath towels. Finally, it strikes her: The family dog, Charlotte, is just right. “At first, I only wear the dog inside the house,” she says. “It seems harmless enough. An improvised self-care remedy that instantly works better than any psychopharmaceutical or baked good ever has.”
That absurd tone runs straight through this novel. Soon Judy is wearing her dog-baby to the grocery store and even to her son’s school. “Shouldn’t everyone be wearing a dog for improved mental health?” she wonders.
Stalked by the loneliness of middle age, you may think the last thing you need is a novel about a woman driven to wearing her dog. You’d be wrong.