The Book Bump

First Published: 2009
Author: Richard Russo
Reading Language: English
Genre: Literary fiction
My rating: 3.5/5

Jack and Joy are on the Cape to celebrate the wedding of their daughter Laura’s best friend. Being on the Cape drags up childhood memories for Jack, as it is where he used to vacation every year with his parents. As the past spills into the present, the cracks in his own happy marriage begin to show.

Richard Russo has been on my radar since reading On Writing by Stephen King. I found this novel in a local book box library and thought, why not?

This was my first Richard Russo novel, so I didn’t exactly know what to expect. I read the praise on the back of the book for his other novels and thought this could be interesting.

As I said, I didn’t know what to expect, but this novel is quite like any other I’ve read. The closest story I can compare it to is Vernon Subutex by Virginie Despentes, where the characters take precedence over the plot.

It’s hard to explain what the novel is about. There isn’t much in the way of a plot, there is no action per se. It’s the narrative of characters going about their daily lives.

It’s about a man, Jack Griffin, and his wife, Joy, their ailing marriage, and Jack’s nostalgia for his former life and career; it’s about Laura, Jack’s daughter and her boyfriend, Andy, and their young love.

It’s about family, parenting, love, loss, grief, divorce… It’s about an older man’s soul-searching journey.

Saying it like that sounds boring, but it is also about so much more than that. That Old Cape Magic is a sometimes funny, sometimes moving, but always spot-on character study that takes place over the course of a year.

It’s an introspective novel about the meaning of life.

Russo’s characters are multidimensional. They are complex and flawed but ever so realistic. My only qualm is that Jack seems to be the only character to have “grown” throughout the novel. He is the only one who is willing to question his foregone conclusions.

In the book, Jack is made out to be the “bad guy” who ruined his marriage chasing a past that no longer exists. Joy is painted as a martyr. Every character in the book has put Joy on a pedestal: Jack (Joy’s husband), Tommy (Jack’s friend and former colleague), and Joy’s family… Joy is supposedly the “good” person.

But I do not wholeheartedly agree with that. I found myself getting frustrated with Joy, wanting her to get off her high horse and accept some responsibility for their failing marriage.

But as outraged as I was reading some of Jack and Joy’s exchanges, I realised how real it felt. It’s easier to escape uncomfortable situations by finding what’s lacking in your life elsewhere. Or by brushing the issues under the proverbial rug.

Throughout the novel, Jack and Joy are often at loggerheads because they seem more concerned with how their life appears to others. Joy still worries about their parents’ approval despite being an adult. What her parents and family think seems to trump what her husband thinks. This seems to me as the wrong foundation on which to build a relationship. Jack isn’t much better. He also constantly reproduces his parents’ attitude towards life.  

Despite being cute, the ending was perhaps the most unrealistic thing the characters did in the novel. But I like it. It gives the reader hope. Maybe a leopard can change his spots, and love trumps all.