THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 27, 1994 TAG: 9411280239
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JENNIFER DAVIS MCDAID
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
VINEGAR HILL
A. MANETTE ANSAY
Viking. 240 pp. $22.95.
The Grier family of 512 Vinegar Hill in Holly's Field, Wis., lives by an unbending catechism: a place for everything, everything in its place; children (and women) should be seen and not heard; money doesn't grow on trees.
Prisoners of their brick rancher, Fritz and Mary-Margaret Grier co-exist in a loveless marriage, their bitter arguments filling the house ``like an odor, clinging to the sofa and seeping between the bedsheets.''
In her lyrical first novel, Vinegar Hill, A. Manette Ansay, winner of a Nelson Algren Prize for her short stories, uses her powerful storytelling skills to bring the Griers' tragedy to life.
When son James loses his job in Illinois, he retreats home, along with his wife, Ellen, and their two children. Ellen, who gently traced with her fingers the network of childhood scars on James' back for the first time on their wedding night, is not enthused over the prospect of moving in with her in-laws.
``As rigid, as precise as a church,'' the Griers' house is scented with Ben-Gay and cluttered with knickknacks, china angels and statues of saints, with little room for anything (or anyone) else. While James finds work selling farm equipment, Ellen tries her best to be a model wife and mother, teaching full time in the town's Catholic school, then returning to Vinegar Hill in the afternoons to cook, clean and act as caretaker for all.
Christmas 1972 upsets the precarious balance of the troubled Grier household. Ellen's request for a real tree and lights is opposed by both her in-laws and her husband, for a litany of reasons: too expensive, too messy, too much trouble, simply not necessary. In an attempt to make peace, James retrieves his parents' artificial tree from the basement, complete with its pre-attached ornaments, one-winged angel, cobwebs and resident spiders. Sprayed with a hefty dose of pine-scented Lysol, the tree (like the family) is pathetic. When James complains that he saw mice in the basement, nesting in the tree's cotton-ball snow, Fritz erupts, beating his son and tearing down the tree.
As Ellen's self-confidence dissolves into despair, the history of the Grier family unfolds in Ansay's skillful narrative, illustrating with horrific clarity the consequences of abuse. In Fritz's self-made world, women, like children, are quiet and compliant; those who are not are beaten until they are. By telling her story from a variety of viewpoints, Ansay heightens its poignancy and impact.
Like innumerable shards of broken glass, the effects of abuse are everywhere, shining brightly in Ansay's evocative narrative: in James, who does not know how to be a father to his children; in Mary-Margaret, who treats everyone (except James) with unthinking cruelty; and in Ann, Mary-Margaret's mother, who long ago responded to her son-in-law's treachery with a desperate, irrevocable act. It is Ellen alone whose courage is able to break the cycle.
Ansay allows us to think along with the book's characters, sharing the stories of their lives. Only one character's thoughts are kept from the reader, for good reason: His actions, saturated with meanness and revenge, are quite enough. Whether eying his teenage granddaughter in a tube top, belittling his daughter-in-law, beating his son's face into a bloody mask or staring impassively at his heart attack-stricken wife, Fritz Grier is the embodiment of misogyny and evil.
By overcoming demons past and present, Ellen assures herself and her children a future. Her self-deliverance is ultimately a lesson in hope, taught with considerable skill and assurance by Ansay. MEMO: Jennifer Davis McDaid, a Norfolk native, works at the Virginia State
Library and Archives in Richmond. ILLUSTRATION: Photo of book jacket
by CNB