A boy’s place in love and loss
The title of Victor Lodato’s new novel, Edgar & Lucy ,isabit misleading. This expansive, surprising book is about 8- and then 9-year-old Edgar Fini and his mother, Lucy, but it is also very much about Edgar’s grandmother, Florence, and his father, Frank, as well as a gathering of other complicated and memorable characters who populate the capacious story.
The book, though sweeping in scope, feels intimate; Lodato has given us an intricate and gorgeous world into which we easily lose ourselves. We’re pulled into the complex lives of the characters, lived both together and apart in small-town New Jersey.
Edgar is adored by his grandmother, who has lost her adult son, Edgar’s father, Frank. Frank, although dead, still makes his presence known in Florence’s house. Lucy and Florence each cope with the mystery of Frank’s death in their own ways, frequently leaving Edgar caught in the middle of their messy love for him as well as their muddled bouts of grief.
Small and delicate, Edgar is a force to be reckoned with in this book. He is quiet, observant, uncannily intelligent and fiercely attached to his mother and his grandmother who, for their parts, are engaged in an impassioned cleavage and cathexis with each other — for reasons Edgar hasn’t yet entirely sorted out. This push and pull is what eventually impels young Edgar to take risks he shouldn’t and the bulk of the novel explores where his wrong turns might lead him.
Lodato ushers us into this world of loss, grief and love with beautiful turns of phrase and remarkable metaphors. We learn how thin Edgar is when Lodato homes in on the bumps of his bones: “Wrists so thin the bones rose like the lurky eyes of an alligator.”
Florence’s husband, Pio, was a worker who once stole tiles from the Port Authority and in relaying this, Lodato crafts a small, moving reverie: “For years, as a newlywed, Florence was terrified whenever she took a bath. Looking up at the white tiles that belonged in the tunnel, she would often imagine the bathroom as a place underwater, a makeshift limbo — the separation between air and liquid meekly provisional.”
He interleaves lovely lines and images like these throughout. We read how “The trees beyond the windows tossed silently, appearing less like trees and more like current-swept vegetation at the bottom of the ocean”.
This is an engrossing novel that is part domestic tale, part ghost story, part coming-of-age narrative and part horror story. Lodato has created a thoroughly engaging novel about a family in crisis and the obvious love he has for each of his characters as well as the vexed, misguided, yet abiding love they clearly feel for each other make this a rich and compelling read.